AMERICAN 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



HISTORY AND PEDAGOGICS 



BY 



JOHN SVVETT 



Author of " History of the Public School System of California," " Methods of Teaching^ 

"Normal Word Book," and '■'' School Elocution ; " and Collaborator in 

the Authorship of Szvin ton's Language Series, Word Book 

Series, and Geography Series, 



^ 



NEW YORK •:• CINCINNATI •:• CHICAGO 
AMERICAN BOOK COMPANY 

u 

I 



TWO COPIES RECEIVED, 

Library of C«B5cet% 
Office of the 



8 - 1900 

Hegl9t«r of Cppyrlghf^f 



1/ 



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vK<\ 



54896 



Copyright, 1900, 
By JOHN SWETT. 



Am. Pub. Sch. 

E-P 1 



86C0ND COPY, 






PREFACE 

This book is intended mainly for the great body of 
American public school teachers, and, incidentally, for li- 
brary use in normal schools or in normal departments of 
other institutions of learning, both public and private. 

The prominence now given to American educational 
history by the pedagogical departments of universities 
has led to a similar line of study in many state normal 
schools. Furthermore, these historical studies have been 
emphasized during the past decade by a long series of able 
and exhaustive papers on the history of our public school 
system, published in the annual reports of the United 
States Commissioner of Education, and in special Bulle- 
tins of Information. 

But these reports, rich in historical treasures, reach 
only a small number of the five hundred thousand teach- 
ers in our country, and are not available for practical pur- 
poses in large classes of normal students. There seems 
to be room for a hand-book containing a series of studies 
on the vital points of public school history ; and also an 
outline of the psychological and pedagogical methods of 
instruction and management in American public schools. 
A knowledge of the history of public education in our 
own country is fast becoming an indispensable part of 

3 



PREFACE 



the educational equipment of every American teacher ; 
and it is to help along this new movement that the 
Part of this book has been written. 

The Second Part relates to applied pedagogics in the 
common schools, and treats specifically of modern courses 
of study in primary and grammar grades ; of school man- 
agement ; of professional reading and study for teachers ; 
and of common-sense applied to rural schools. In this 
part, as in the historical part, the author has made free 
use of quotations from the latest writings of American 
educational leaders in order to show the drift of modern 
pedagogical and psychological thought. 



JOHN SWETT. 



San FRANCibCo, 1899. 



CONTENTS 



Part I. History of American Public Schools. 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. Colonial Schools 7 

II. Early American Schools ....... 34 

III. Secondary and Higher Public Education . . . -73 

IV. Public Schools after the Civil War 93 

V. Common-School Courses of Study . . . . .118 

VI. Studies on Common-School Text-Books . . , .130 
VII. Educational Outlook for the Twentieth Century, . 164 



Part II. Applied Pedagogics in American Public Schools. 

I, Management in School Government . . . . -173 

II. Suggestions on Class-Room Management . . .179 

III. Recitations and the Art of Using Text-Books . . ,188 

IV. Professional Reading and Study . . . . .199 
V. Pedagogics Applied to Reading, Writing, Spelling, and 

Drawing, in Modern Graded Schools .... 206 

VI. The Art of Teaching Language Lessons and Grammar . 230 

VII. Pedagogical Principles applied to Arithmetic . . . 240 

5 



6 CONTENTS 

CHAP. PAGB 

VIII. Psychological Principles in Teaching Elementary History . 259 

IX. Natural Methods in Teaching Geography . . . 269 

X. The Natural Method in ]SIature Studies . . . .278 

XI. Modern Views on Physical Culture . . * . . . 286 

XII. Modem Training in Morals and Manners .... 292 

XIII. Common-Sense Applied to Rural Schools . . . 303 



PART I 

HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



CHAPTER I 
COLONIAL SCHOOLS 

For typical studies we may begin with the four chief 
centers of early settlements in our country : New England, 
New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. 

The Colonists at Plymouth did not open a public school 
until fifty years after the Pilgrim Fathers set foot on 
Plymouth Rock. But the little band of one hundred and 
two men, women, and children that came over in the 
Mayflower^ at once organized a civil government, and 
immediately set about paying off their indebtedness to 
the Plymouth Company by making shipments of fish, 
furs, and lumber. In thirteen years the freemen of this 
small settlement owned their homesteads free from debt. 
For half a century the few children in this colony of slow 
growth were taught at home or in dame schools to read 
the catechism and the Bible ; for so much instruction the 
Pilgrims held to be a religious duty. In due time, when 
children had increased in numbers, the freeholders of the 
town of Plymouth set up a "■ Latin Grammar School " of 
the English type (1670) ; and three years later (1673) they 
established, after the manner of the Netherlands, where 
the Pilgrims had sojourned for a time, a public school for 
teaching the children to read and write their mother 

7 



8 H/STORV OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

tongue. For .the public support of this school they- 
aj)ph'ed the profits of the Cape Cod fisheries. 

The Puritans who settled around Massachusetts Bay 
in 1630 were stronger in numbers and richer in means 
than the Plymouth Pilgrims. It is estimated that at least 
20,000 emigrants came over from England during the 
period of rapid settlement from 1630 to 1650. The 
Boston Latin School (1635-36) appears to have been the 
first public school opened in New England. It was 
started by subscriptions, was supported in the beginning 
partly by town appropriations ; afterwards entirely by the 
town. Sir Henry Vane headed the list of subscribers 
with a gift of ten pounds sterling. 

" There is no notice of a school among the regular 
entries of Boston records until 1642," says Felt's ** Annals 
of Salem," '* but on the last leaf of the first volume is a 
list, dated 1636, of subscribers and their donations towards 
a school of this kind." This Latin School was exclusively 
designed to fit boys for college. It was the only public 
school in Boston for a period of more than thirty 
years. Harvard College was founded (1637-38) for the 
chief purpose of training up an educated ministry. One 
year later (1639), a printing press was set up at Cam- 
bridge. 

Other towns in New England followed the example 
of Boston and established " Grammar Schools," chiefly 
designed to teach Latin grammar, but incidentally in- 
cluding a little instruction in reading, writing, and arith- 
metic. In order of time these schools were set up as 
follows: Charlestown (1636); Dorchester and Newbury 
(1639); Salem (1641); New Haven (1639-41); Hartford 
(1642); Newport, R. 1.(1640); Dedham (1651); Ipswich 
(1642); Plymouth (1670). 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS g 

These grammar schools were supported in part by 
tuition fees and in part by town appropriations. Occa- 
sionally they received small grants of land or individual 
bequests. They were public schools entirely under control 
of the civil government, though they had strong church 
affiliations. They were designed to fit boys for college. 
The girls of this period either attended private schools or 
grew up without schooling. As the settlers were trans- 
planted Englishmen, their schools, as a matter of course, 
were modeled upon the plan of the eighteen Latin grammar 
schools founded in England during the reign of Edward 
VI. It was not until two centuries after the settlement 
of New England that Old England took any measures for 
providing for the elementary instruction of the children 
of the common people, other than in charity schools in 
connection with the established church. Consequently 
the colonists did not inherit the '' common-school idea " 
from England. 

The legal conditions of admission to all these primitive 
grammar schools read as follows : " No youth shall be 
sent to the grammar schools unless they shall have learned 
in some other way to read the English language by spell- 
ing the same." Consequently, for many years, children 
were taught to read at home, or in private schools, or 
dame schools, or were allowed to grow up illiterate. In 
due course of time most of these early grammar schools 
became free public schools supported by taxation, and, 150 
years later, girls gained admission to them. Cotton Mather 
in his " Magnalia," says : " When scholars had so far 
profited at the grammar schools that they could read any 
classical author into English and readily make and speak 
true Latin, and write it in verse as well as in prose, and 
perfectly decline the paradigms of nouns and verbs in the 



lO HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Greek tongue, they were judged capable of admission to 
Harvard College." 

RECORDS OF GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. 

The student of educational history must not be misled 
by the colonial use of the terms, " free school," '' Latin 
school," " grammar school," and '' public school." They 
were all used, at times, to designate public schools sup- 
ported in part by tuition fees, and were also applied to 
schools under church control. It is claimed, for instance, 
that the first '* free school " in America was established in 
1621, by the Rev. Patrick Copeland, in Charles City, Vir- 
ginia. This was evidently a parish school, supported by 
subscriptions. 

Town of Dedham. — It was ordered in town meeting 
(165 1) ''that all such inhabitants in our town as have male 
children or servants in their families shall for each pay to 
the schoolmaster for the time being the sum of five shil- 
lings per annum ; and (2) that whatever these sums shall 
fall short of the sum of twenty pounds shall be raised by 
by way of rateing upon estates according to the usual 



manner." 



The Dorchester School. — The history of the town of 
Dorchester (now a part of the city of Boston) is of special 
interest, as it contains a record of one of the earliest of 
town meetings in New England. 

Town Records. — " Monday, Oct. 8, 1633. Imprimis. It is ordered 
that for the general good and well ordering of the affairs of the planta- 
tion, there shall be every Monday before the Court, by 8 o'clock A. M., 
and presently by the beating of the drum, a general meeting of the in- 
habitants of the plantation at the meeting-house, there to settle and set 
down such orders as may tend to the general good aforesaid, and every 
man to be bound thereby, without gainsaying or resistance," 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS IX 

Other towns followed this example, and in 1636, three 
years later, the General Court of the Bay Colony passed 
an act regulating town government and establishing the 
town meeting as an institution of local civil government. 
The town meeting laid the foundation for the town 
school. 

In 1635 the General Court of the Bay Colony granted 
to the inhabitants of Dorchester certain lands on " Thomp- 
son's Island/' and in 1639 the town meeting voted to levy 
a tax on the proprietors of said island for " the main- 
tenance of a school in Dorchester." This was a grammar 
school for boys, and was supported in part by tuition fees. 
So far as public records show, this seems to have been 
the first direct tax voted in New England for the partial 
support of a public school. 

School Committee. — In 1645 the Dorchester town 
meeting elected a special school committee of three, 
termed " wardens or overseers of the schools," and adopted 
*' rules and orders concerning the school," in part, as 
follows : 

" 2ly. That from the beginning of the first moneth untill the end of 
the 7th, hee shall every day begin to teach at seaven of the Clock in the 
morning and dismisse his schollers at five in the afternoon, and for 
the other five months he shall every day begin at 8 of the Clock in the 
morning and end at 4 in the afternoon." 

" 5ly. Hee shall equally and impartially receiue and instruct such 
as shalbe sent and Committed to him for that end, whither there 
parents bee poore or rich, not refusing any who have Right & In- 
terest in the Schools." 

" 61y. Such as shall be Committed to him he shall diligently instruct, 
as they shalbe able to learne, both in humane learning and good 
literature, & likewyse in Poynt of good manners and dutifuU behauior 
towards all, specially there superiors as they shall haue occasion to 
bee in there presence, whither by meeting them in the streete or 
otherwyse." 



12 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



" 7ly. Euery 6 day in the weeke at 2 of the Clock in the after noone, 
hee shall Catechise his SchoUers in the principles of Christian religion, 
either in some Catechism wch the Wardens shall provide and present, 
or in defect thereof in some other." 

Schools in Boston.— In 1682, half a century after the 
settlement of the town, it was ordered in town meeting : 
'' That a committee with the selectmen consider and pro- 
vide for the teaching of children to write and cipher 
within this town." Accordingly, grammar schools were 
soon opened, with one department for teaching '' writing 
and ciphering," and another department for teaching 
*' reading and spelling." These unique schools, English 
in type, are explained by George H. Martin in his " Evo- 
lution of the Massachusetts Public School System," as 
follows : '* These grammar schools were double-headed af- 
fairs, divided into a writing department and a reading de- 
partment, and with a master and an assistant, the two 
masters having original and concurrent jurisdiction over 
the pupils. In the writing schools, arithmetic and pen- 
manship were taught to all, while algebra, geometry, 
and bookkeeping were optional. In the reading schools, 
reading and spelling, with definitions, grammar, and 
geography were req^tired studies, with history, astron- 
omy, and natural philosophy optional. The pupils spent 
the morning in one school and the afternoon in the 
other." 

These grammar schools of 1682, however, were open to 
boys only. It was not until 1789, a century later, that 
girls were allowed to enter them, and then only from 
April to October in each year, and only at hours when the 
boys were not in attendance. 

It was not until 181 8 that Boston opened primary 
schools for teaching both boys and girls to read and write 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS 1 3 

the English language. The town of Northampton voted 
in 1792 to admit girls into the grammar schools from May 
1st to October 31st. 

In this connection it is worth noting that in 1696 the 
Scottish Parliament enacted a law which established a 
school in every parish and provided for its support partly 
by parish tax and partly by rate bills. The way had been 
opened for this law by the work of John Knox, more 
than a century before, in establishing parish schools in 
connection with the Scotch Kirk. 

Town of Salem. — This town, one of the first settlements 
in the Bay Colony (1629), ranked for a long period next 
to Boston in wealth and commerce. It held to English 
customs and educational ideas with peculiar tenacity. It 
established a British "Latin grammar school" in 1641 ; 
but made no public provision for teaching girls to read 
and write the English language until a hundred and fifty 
years later, and did not place girls on an equal footing 
with boys until 18 12, one hundred and seventy-one years 
after the first Latin school was founded. It is historically 
interesting as the center of the witchcraft delusion in New 
England. Its school records, complete from the begin- 
ning, afford the pedagogical student a striking illustration 
of the slow evolution of the common school idea. These 
town records are made available by Felt's *' Annals of 
Salem" (1845). In the first volume of this book there are 
eighty pages of pubhc school history, made up largely of 
quotations from town records. The following extracts 
mark a few of the successive stages of school development. 

Records.- " 1641. March 30. Co]. Endecot moved about the ffences 
and about a ffree skoole and therefore wished a whole towne meeting 
about it ; therefore, that Goodman Auger warne a towne meeting the 



14 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

second day of the weeke." The town meeting established a Latin 
Grammar School (1641) in accordance with the call. 

1644. "Ordered that if any poore body hath children or a child to 
be put to school and not able to pay for their schooling, that the 
towne will pay for it by rate." This " free skoole " was a Latin 
grammar school, free only to those too poor to pay for instruction. 
" Such was the practice to a limited degree in the metropolis " (Boston), 
says the historian of Salem, " and, to a considerable degree, in other 
places of the Commonwealth. This continued, more or less so, among 
our population till 1768." 

1657. " A bill came to hand to make a rate for the Coledge [Harvard] 

LS 6s." 

1680, Apr. 5. "Concerning the Colledge money. For building : 
amount raised by subscription ;^ 130-2-3." 

1716. "John Swinnerton began, 25th ult. to keep the English 
school by the town house." [First mention of an English grammar 
school]. 

1733, Jan. 4. " The Grammar School had 36, and the English 
school 30 scholars." 

1743, May II. "Voted that the Latin and English schools be united 
under a master and usher. Each Latin scholar paid 5s a quarter, 
and each English scholar 2s. 6d. a quarter." 

1764, May 16. Order for ^10, " to pay for learning the poorest 
children to read at women's schools " [dame schools]. 

1767, March 9. Committee of the English school are empowered to 
spend the same sum for a like purpose. 

1793, March 11. School committee authorized to provide for the 
tuition of girls in writing schools or elsewhere, " in reading, writing, 
and ciphering." 

1796, July 19. Statement that schools for young girls had been 
opened. [Primary schools. J 

1801, April 13. "Notice is published, that writing, arithmetic, 
English grammar, composition, and geography are to be taught in the 
grammar school, besides Latin and Greek." 

1 801, May 2. Notice is published that three public schools for 
children of both sexes, and not less than live years old, are opened. 
[Primary sciiools.] 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS 1 5 

RURAL " COMMON SCHOOLS " IN NEW ENGLAND. 

It was outside of Boston and its surrounding group of 
^' grammar school " towns, in the outlying rural settle- 
ments of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hamp- 
shire, that conditions were most favorable to the develop- 
ment of the colonial " common school." These pioneer 
settlers were a homogeneous people from the Puritan 
counties of England. They had no paternal government 
and no chartered companies to care for them ; but they 
were well fitted to look out for themselves. The earnest- 
ness of their religious convictions held them up to high 
standards. They had no bitter contentions arising from 
differences in race, language, or religion ; consequently, 
it was possible for them to act together in establishing 
town government and common schools. Like the Pil- 
grims, they were determined that their children should be 
able to read the Bible, the catechism, and the laws. 

Driven by the " land hunger " characteristic of English 
pioneers, small groups of settlers pushed out into the 
forest wilderness of New England, and, in the face of 
Indians, secured home-farms, erected meeting-houses, and 
built schoolhouses. Presently the people, assembled in 
town meeting, elected a teacher, and started a school, sup- 
ported in part from a scanty town treasury and in part 
eked out by voluntary subscriptions or tuition fees. The 
children were instructed in reading, spelling, writing, 
arithmetic, and good manners. The school was open to 
boys and girls on equal terms. The co-education of the 
sexes was not a theory ; it was a condition of necessity. 
Pupils entered school at five years of age, and were allowed 
to attend up to the age of twenty-one. In these rural 
schools the main purpose was to teach the English Ian- 



l6 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

guage, not the Latin. Rude and primitive schools they 
were, as befitted the pioneer conditions of a people fight- 
ing for survival among Indians, and wringing a scanty- 
subsistence from a stubborn soil under a harsh sky. 

These schools have an accurately recorded history writ- 
ten in town records of civil government. They were 
organized directly by the common people for the free pub- 
lic education of all children, without distinction of class, 
or caste, or sex. Of free charity schools for teaching the 
children of the poor, the history of the world is full. Of 
schools established for the higher classes by centralized 
paternal governments, there are numerous examples. But 
these rural schools were not copies of European schools. 
They were planned neither by educational theorists nor 
by speculative metaphysicians. Plato had taught, cen- 
turies ago, that in a commonwealth the working classes 
had no need of any education whatever. These Puritan 
farmers and mechanics had never read Plato in the origi- 
nal Greek ; but they had faith in God and themselves, and 
guided by hard common-sense, they saw to it that their 
children learned to read and write their mother tongue, 
and to cipher. Their schools were rightly named *' com- 
mon schools," because they brought together all the chil- 
dren of each little democratic community, on one common 
level of equal legal rights to an elementary education in 
the English language. 

Many favorable conditions were combined to lead up 
to the organization of these schools. For defense against 
attacks of Indians the early settlers were grouped in vil- 
lacres surrounded bv stockades. There was no established 
Church of England to monopolize education. Each little 
Congregationalist church was an independent organization, 
governed by its own members. For more than a century i 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS 1 7 

the ministers as well as the teachers in rural towns were 
elected in town meeting. Consequently the ministers 
were strong in their support of free schools. 

" These were the first lawgivers," said James Russell Lowell, "who 
saw clearly and enforced practically, the simple, moral, and political 
truth, that knowledge was not an alms to be dependent on the chance 
charity of private men, or the precarious pittance of a trust-fund, but 
a sacred debt which the commonwealth owed to every one of her chil- 
dren. The opening of the first grammar school was the opening of 
the first trench against monopoly in Church and State ; the first row 
of trammels and pothooks which the little Shearjashubs and Elkanahs 
blotted and blubbered across their copy-books, was the preamble to 
the Declaration of Independence." 

" The arts, sciences, and literature of England," said Daniel Webster, 
" came over with these settlers. That great portion of the common 
law which regulates the social and personal relations and conduct of 
men, came over also. The jury came ; the habeas corptis came ; the 
testamentary power came ; and the law of inheritance and descent 
came also. But the monarchy did not come, nor the aristocracy, nor 
the church, as an estate of the realm. Political institutions were to be 
framed anew, such as should be adapted to the state of things." 

It may be added to the preceding statements that the 
Pilgrims at Plymouth as soon as they organized civil 
government adopted the written ballot and the law which 
prevailed in Holland, but not in England, requiring a 
public record of land titles, deeds, and mortgages, as a 
protection against fraud, and for facilitating the transaction 
of business. The same rule was followed a little later by 
the Puritans of the Bay Colony. The Dutch settlers in 
New Netherlands adopted similar laws, which they brought 
with them from the republic of Holland. 

The published records and special histories of several 
hundred towns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Con- 
necticut, and Maine are now to be found in the state, city, 
and town libraries of New England. To the student of 

AM. PUB. SCH. 2. 



l8 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

educational history they furnish an account of the begin- 
nings of the free American rural common school, — the 
most democratic institution known on the face of the 
earth, — a school under the control of the civil power, free 
to boys and girls alike, supported by a direct property tax 
voted by the people assembled in town meeting. The 
limits of this chapter will not admit of many extracts from 
original town records in proof of the preceding statements, 
but a few quotations will make luminous the origin of 
common schools. 

HISTORICAL RECORDS OF COMMON SCHOOLS. 

Town of Hampton (N. H.). — " On the 2 of the 2 mo., 1649. The select- 
men of this Towne of Hampton have agreed with John Legat for this 
present yeare insueing — To teach and instruct all the children of or be- 
longing to our Towne both fnayle a7idfeniaile (wch are capiable of learn- 
ing) to write and read and cast accountes (if it be desired) as dilegently 
and as carefully as he is able to teach and instruct them ; And so dile- 
gently to follow the said imploymentt at all such time and times this 
yeare insueing, as the wether shall be fitting for the youth to com 
together to one place to be instructed ; And also to teach and instruct 
them once in a week, or more, in some Arthodox catechise provided 
for them by their parents or masters. — And in consideration hereof we 
have agreed to pay or cause to be payd unto the said John Legat the 
som of Twenty pounds, in corne and cattle and butter att price current, 
as payments are made of such goods in this Towne, and this to be 
payd by us quarterly, paying ^5 every quarter of the yeare after he has 
begun to keep school.^ " This record was made ten years after the 
settlement of the town (1639). In 1670 the town record runs as fol- 
lows : " That the Schoolemaster's Rate for this year shall bee Raised 
by Estates of the Inhabitants as other Towne Rates are." Hampton 
Academy was incorporated in 18 10. 

Town of Plymouth (Mass.). — 1673. Ordered in town meeting " that 
the charge of the free scools which is three and thirty pounds a year 
shall be defrayed out of the profits arising by the fishing at the Cape." 

1 Dow's " History of Hampton " (1893), Vol. I. 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS lo 

Town of Sanbornton (N. H.). — This town, settled in 
1764, voted in 1774 " to hire a school teacher part of this 
year and raise $30 for that purpose." Capt. Eben San- 
born, the teacher, was paid $5.00 a month. He taught in 
a barn, and many of his pupils used birch bark as writing 
paper. 

Town of Pittsfield (N. H.).— This town was settled in 
1768, largely by emigrants from the* town of Hampton. 
The following extracts from the manuscript records show 
that the custom of electing the teacher in town meeting 
had been kept up in parts of New England for more than 
a century. This record also illustrates the manner of elect- 
ing ministers, which was common in parts of New England 
for more than a century. It further shows the natural 
development of the academy. 

"1782. — Voted. To hire Jonathan Brown to teach a school for 
six months at nine dollars a month." 

" Voted. To build a meeting-house of the same bigness of Hamp- 
ton Falls meeting-house, except the posts to be one foot shorter." 

" Voted. To raise some money this year for preaching, to be paid 
in corn, grain, and other produce." 

1789. — Voted, Mr. Christopher Paige a salary of sixty-six pounds 
yearly, the one-third part in cash, and one-third part in corn at three 
shillings per bushel, and a third part in good beef at twenty shillings 
per hundred, during his ministry in said town."i 

Forty years after the preceding record the farmers of 
this small town of less than a thousand inhabitants con- 
tributed labor, lumber, and money ; erected a building ; 
and established an undenominational academy. This 
institution had no endowments, no apparatus, and no 
library. The successive preceptors of the school were 
young graduates of Dartmouth College, who were study- 

^ Original unpublished records of the town of Pittsfield. 



20 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

ing law, medicine, or theology. But this almost unknown 
academy, typical of many others, made a good record. It 
sent many students to college. Of its farmer-boy students, 
one became a United States senator from his native 
state ; another a judge of the Supreme Court ; a third, 
a judge in the Supreme Court of Minnesota. A large 
number studied law, many became teachers, and still more 
became successful business men in the various pursuits of 
life. More than half of the young men moved West, and 
a few reached California. Half a century after its foun- 
dation the academy was transformed into a town high 
school. 

Dame Schools, — These schools, both in England and 
New England were small private schools set up by 
women, generally in their own homes, for teaching young 
children to read in the primer or catechism. In most 
of the grammar-school towns the dame schools, for a 
century or more, fitted the boys for admission to the Latin 
schools, that is to say, taught them *' to read the English 
language by spelling the same." It was in such schools , 
that the little girls learned to read ; but girls were not 
allowed in the sacred precincts of the grammar school 
until about the beginning of the nineteenth century. In the 
course of time, some of the towns began to aid these 
private dame schools by small subsidies as an encourage- 
ment to continue their good work. Next, one town after 
another began to employ teachers at a regular salary. 
This innovation was the beginning of the modern primary 
school. 

The town of Woburn (1641) agreed to pay Mrs. Walker 
ten shillings for the first year. In 1673 the town records 
show that two " dame teachers " were paid a total sum of 
ten shillings, or five shillings each, for the year, But 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS 21 

these '* dame teachers " undoubtedly collected the con- 
ventional tuition-fee for supplementary support. 

Town of Springfield (Mass.) — 1682. "The Selectmen agreed with 
Goodwife Mirick, to encourage her in the good work of training 
up of children and teaching children to read, that she should have 3d. 
a week for every child that she takes to perform this good work for." 

Town of Hadley (Mass.). — 1749, March 13. It was voted that the 
committee should " hire three School Dames for three or four months 
in the Summer season to learn children to read." In 1752 it was voted 
that " 30 pounds be improved to hire a scool master all the fall of 
the year ; and that the other 30 pounds be improved to hire Scoole 
Dames in the Summer." 

Town of Salem (Mass.). — " 1764, May 16. Order for ^Tio to pay for 
learning the poorest children to read at women's schools." 

" 1771, Feb. 12. Widow Abigail Fowler, a noted 'school dame' 
finished her earthly labors. She was in her 68th vear, and began to 
teach children before she was 18, and continued so to do till her de- 
cease, with the exception of a few years after she was married." 

Education of Girls. — The records of the town of Hamp- 
ton (N. H.), 1649, show that the first school established 
there was open to ^' all the children of or belonging to 
our town, botJi male and female^ In most of the rural 
town or district schools established after that date in New 
Hampshire and the small rural districts of Massachusetts 
the schools were open to both girls and boys. The 
grammar-school towns lagged far behind the rural dis- 
tricts in providing for the education of girls, seeming to 
have been content with English precedents. 

Town of Salem (Mass.). — 1812, June i r. The historian of this town 
quotes from the records of this date as follows : " In the four public 
schools for English there are 465 boys and 295 girls. The latter at- 
tended, as usual, an hour at noon, and another in the afternoon. The 
Grammar school (Latin) had 40 pupils." To the credit of this town 
it may be here stated that 1 3 years later when it had become an incor- 
porated city, two high schools were opened, one for boys and another 



22 



HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



for girls. " At this time." says the historian, " the tuition of females 
for an hour each day during a part of the year at the masters' schools 
seems to have been relinquished." 



COLOxNIAL SCHOOL LAWS IN NEW ENGLAND. 

Turning to legislative records, we find that in 1642 
the General Court of Massachusetts enacted that the 
selectmen of every town '' should have a vigilant eye 
over their brethren and neighbors to see that none of 
them shall suffer so much barbarism in any of their fami- 
lies as not to endeavor to teach by themselves or others, 
their children and apprentices so much learning as to en- 
able them to read perfectly the English tongue, under a 
penalty of 20s for each neglect therein." The Connecti- 
cut code of 1650 contained a similar provision. 

The General Court of the Plymouth Colony (1658) 
proposed '* unto the several Townshipes of this Jurisdic- 
tion, as a thing they ought to take into their serious con- 
sideration, that some course may be taken that in every 
Towne there may be a schoolmaster sett up to traine up 
children to reading and writing." 

' In 1677, the General Court of the Plymouth Colony made the fol- 
lowing order : " That in whatsoever Townshipe in this Government, 
consisting of 50 families or upwards, any meet man shall be obtained 
to teach a Gramer Scoole, such townshippe shall allow at least twelve 
pounds in currant merchantable pay, to be raised by rate on all the 
inhabitants of such towne, and those that have the more immede- 
ate benefit thereof by their children's going to school, with what 
others may voluntarily give to promote so good a work and general, 
shall make up the residue Necessarie to maintaine the same ; and that 
the proffits of the Cape ffishing heretofore ordered to maintain a 
Gramer Scoole in the colonie be distributed to such towns as have 
Gramer Scooles, for the maintainance thereof," etc. 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS 23 

The Massachusetts Colony law of 1647 required every 
town of fifty families or upwards to appoint a teacher to 
instruct children in reading and writing ; and every town 
of one hundred families '' to set up a grammar school, the 
expense to be borne by the town or by the parents as the 
town may determine." This was only a legal recommenda- 
tion, as no penalty was attached for not carrying it into 
effect. The Connecticut Colony law passed a few years 
later (1650) enacted that every town having seventy 
householders, or upwards, should maintain a school for 
eleven months each year, and that a grammar school 
should be set up in every head or county town. For the 
support of such schools a tax of forty shillings '* upon 
every thousand pounds in the lists of the respective 
towns " was levied and collected by colonial law. 

The New Haven Code (1656) ordered "That all Parents and Mas- 
ters doe duly endeavor, either by their own ability and labour, or by 
improving such Schoolmaster, or other helps and means, as the Plan- 
tation doth afford, or the family may conveniently provide, that all 
their Children and Apprentices, as they grow capable, may, through 
God's blessing, attain at least so much, as to be able to read the 
Scriptures and other good and profitable printed Books in the English 
tongue, being their native language, and in some competent measure, 
to understand the main grounds and principles of Christian religion 
necessary to Salvation." 

COLONIAL SCHOOLS IN NEW YORK. 

The Dutch West India Company established trading 
posts on Manhattan Island and at various other points in 
the province of New Netherlands, a few years before the 
English made a lodgment in New England. The church 
and the school were established together. These sturdy 
republicans brought with them some of the best of the 



24 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



civil institutions of Holland ; such as the written ballot, 
public records of land titles and legal documents, and 
elementary schools for the education of the children of 
the common people. In 1633 Adam Roelandsen was 
sent over from the mother country to take charge of the 
school in the town of New Amsterdam on Manhattan 
Island. This first public school with an established record 
was called " The School of the Dutch Reformed Protes- 
tant Church." It is still in existence in New York city, 
and is claimed to be the oldest school in the United States. 
Dutch Colonial Schools. — Schools were opened at Al- 
bany (1650); Flatbush (1659); Brooklyn (1661). In the 
town of New Amsterdam a Latin grammar school, or 
classical school, was established in 1659 and was supported 
partly by tuition fees and partly by taxation. These 
early schools seem to have been chiefly managed b}^ the 
Dutch Reformed Protestant Church ; but as the town 
settlements grew stronger the schools were maintained, 
in part, or entirely, by public moneys. The tendency was 
in the same general direction as in the rural settlements 
in New England, that is, towards providing elementary 
instruction for the many rather than a training in Latin 
for the few. Instruction was given in reading and writ- 
ing the Dutch language, in arithmetic, in the catechism 
of the Dutch Church, and in the Bible. Those early set- 
tlers, like the Pilgrims and Puritans, highly prized the 
right to read the Bible and to worship God according to 
the dictates of conscience. They held in living remem- 
brance the long and bloody war which their ancestors had 
waged against Spain, and in defense of civil and religious 
liberty. These colonists from Holland brought with them 
advanced, ideas about elementary schools for the educa- 
tion of the common people. At this time the republic of 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS 25 

Holland was the leading nation of Europe in commerce, 
industries, civil liberty, and the general education of its 
people.^ 

English Schools. — But this province was seized by Eng- 
land in 1664, and the Dutch schools were arrested in devel- 
opment. Under English rule the royal governors were 
unfriendly to schools that were not under the protecting 
care of the English Church. They vetoed several attempts 
to establish common schools managed directly by the 
people. They established several Latin grammar schools, 
and founded (1754) King's College, now Columbia Uni- 
versity. One governor, in a letter to the home govern- 
ment, urged a charter for King's College in the town of 
New York, '' not only on account of religion, but of good 
policy, to prevent the groivtJi of republican principles 
which already too much prevail in the colonies^ During 
the reign of King James, the colony was forbidden to 
have a printing press. 

Meantime, the strongest of the Dutch colonial schools 
maintained a lingering existence under teachers selected by 
the Dutch Reformed Church, a right guaranteed to them 
under the terms of surrender in 1664. Thus for a long 
period there were two rival sets of public schools ; one 
class under the control of the Church of England, the 
other governed by the Dutch Reformed Protestant Church. 
Both were eventually fused into a composite system of 
free common schools. For a century, however, "" The 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign 
Parts," under the auspices of the Church of England, 
looked after the establishment of parish schools, which 
were mainly supported by tuition fees. From 1704 to 

1 See Motley's " Dutch Republic," also Campbell's " The Puritan in 
Holland, England, and America," 



26 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

1776 this society established twenty-one schools. These 
schools provided for the education of a part of the chil- 
dren, but not for all. They were good in their way, and 
were the natural development of civil and political con- 
ditions. 

The common-school record of New York, chiefly made 
up after the adoption of the Constitution, will again be 
considered in a succeeding chapter. '* We must be con- 
tent for the present," says Andrew S. Draper, "■ with the 
statement, which is abundantly supported by the facts, 
that under the mistaken policy of the English rule, the 
schools languished, and during the progress of the war for 
independence which raged with great fierceness over our 
territory, they were nearly or quite obliterated. The fury 
of war had closed the doors or entirely extinguished the 
single college, and, practically, all the academies and 
schools." 

But the Dutch and the English schools together trained 
up several generations into a patriotic people. During 
the Revolutionary War New York supplied her full quota 
of troops and answered all requisitions of the Continental 
Congress for money. The descendants of the Dutch set- 
tlers proved themselves worthy of their ancestors in Hol- 
land who had defied the power of Spain, and established 
a Dutch republic. English Puritans and Dutch Puritans 
stood together for independence. 

COLONIAL SCHOOLS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

William Penn sent the first colony of English Quakers 
to Philadelphia half a century after the Pilgrims settled 
at Plymouth. The desire for religious liberty led to the 
foundation of Pennsylvania as well as to that of New 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS 2/ 

England. The tolerant government of the province soon 
attracted great numbers of Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, 
German Lutherans, Swedish Lutherans, Dutch Mennon- 
ites, Moravians, English Episcopalians, and Catholics. 
In 1685 only about half the inhabitants were of English 
descent. The Scotch-Irish, driven from the north of 
Ireland by the decay of the linen industry, came in great 
numbers, and the German immigration from the Palati- 
nate was large. The population of the province rose 
from 20,000 in 1701 to 250,000 in 1749. It has been 
estimated that at the beginning of the Revolution about 
one third of the population of Pennsylvania was of Scotch- 
Irish stock. ^ 

Parish Schools. — It was impossible for these divergent 
peoples to act together in organizing public schools. 
Consequently education was provided for by typical 
parish and " society " schools under the control of zealous 
religious sects. These sectarian schools were supported 
by tuition fees, though the children of the poor were some- 
times admitted as free charity or pauper pupils. They 
educated a part of the children, but not all. It was not 
possible at that time for the people to conceive of schools 
disconnected from church or society control. But the 
Scotch-Irish Presbyterian schools and the German schools 
educated their children to some purpose ; for this fighting 
stock contributed a majority of the Pennsylvania quota 
of troops during the Revolution. In Pennsylvania one 
third of the population was made up of Quakers who had 
conscientious scruples against bearing arms. The fight- 
ing men of this state came chiefly from the Scotch-Irish 
and the Germans. 

' " The Puritan in Holland, England, and America," by Douglas 
Campbell (1892). 



2 8 J f IS TORY OF AMICRICAX PrilLIC SCHOOLS 

The Provincial Council in 1683, on tlic i6thof October 
established a private school by the following enactment : ^ 

" The Governor and Provincial Council having taken into their 
serious consideration the great necessity there is of a School Master 
for ye instruction & Sober Education of youth in the towne of Phila- 
delphia, sent for Enoch Flower, an inhabitant of the said towne who 
for twenty years past hath been exercised in that care and employment 
in England, to whom having communicated their minds, he embraced 
it upon the following terms : To learn to read English, 4s by the 
Quarter, to learn to read & write and cast accounts, 8s by the Quarter ; 
for boarding a scholar, that is to say, diet, washing, lodging, and school- 
ing, ten pounds for one whole year." 

Friends' Public School. — A grammar school was char- 
tered by the Council in 1689 *' at the request, costs, and 
charges of the people called Quakers." This school is 
stil) in existence as the " Friends' Public School." The 
petitioners stipulated to instruct the rich at reasonable 
rates, the poor to be " schooled for nothing." *' With a 
few legislative resolutions," says Dr. J. P. Wickersham in 
his " History of Education in Pennsylvania," *' none of 
which were in the direction of the common school idea, 
the historian of this colony may dismiss the considera- 
tion of education for well nigh a hundred years." 

Benjamin Franklin, remembering his three years' course 
in a Boston grammar school, made a resolute endeavor 
to educate popular opinion up to the point of establishing 
free common schools, but he failed as Jefferson afterwards 
failed in Virginia. He succeeded, however, in securing 
a chartered academy in Philadelphia (1755), with the 
three departments of charity school, academy, and col- 
lege. This triple school eventually was developed into 

1 Quoted from Dr. Blackmar's " Bulletin of Information," Bureau of 
Education, 1890. 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS 



29 



the University of Pennsylvania, and Franklin's school 
itself was a modified form of Penn's grammar school of 
1697. It was not until after the adoption of the Consti- 
tution that any real headway was made in establishing 
public schools, and even then progress was slow. 

COLONIAL SCHOOLS IN VIRGINIA. 

The English settlers in Virginia, and their descendants 
for more than a century and a half after the settlement of 
Jamestown (1607), were content with private tutors and 
parish schools established by the Church of England, 
supplemented by a. few grammar schools, academies, 
seminaries, and the College of William and Mary. All of 
these schools were supported chiefly by tuition fees. They 
taught the children whose parents could afford to pay for 
an education, and left large numbers in the rural districts 
with little or no schooling. In Virginia the system of 
land tenure, the absence of town government, a scattered 
rural population, the parish schools of the Church of 
England, and the institution of slavery, — all stood in the 
way of public schools for nearly two centuries. In early 
colonial times (1671) Governor Berkeley placed himself 
on record as a bluff old English Tory by declaring : " I 
thank God there are no free schools or printing, and I 
hope we shall not have them these hundred years." Vir- 
ginia was filled up by a homogeneous people from Eng- 
land, strong in their attachment to the Established 
Church. They clung to the civil institutions of England 
with extreme tenacity until long after the Revolution. 

George Washington was taught to read and write and 
cipher in a parish school. He was taught surveying by a 
private tutor. He was trained to arms in the French and 



30 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



Indian War, and was the one man in all the colonies best 
fitted to command the Continental Army, and to organize 
civil government as first president of the United States. 

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson retired from the Continental 
Congress and became a member of the legislature of 
Virginia. By his efforts the laws of entail, primogeniture, 
and the union of Church and State were removed from 
the statute books ; but the hostility of the ecclesiastical 
and landed interests proved an impassable barrier to his 
earnest efforts in behalf of a system of public schools. 
The '' old field schools," supported by tuition fees, were 
considered to be sufficient for the common people. 

But the work of the early educational institutions of 
the Old Dominion must not be underrated. They gave 
to the new republic great statesmen like Washington, 
Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Patrick Henry, and sent 
into the Continental Army a body of patriotic soldiers 
worthy of their great commander-in-chief. 

SLOW COLONIAL PROGRESS. 

During the first century of settlement the colonists 
were mainly engaged in fighting the Indians, subduing the 
wilderness, and organizing civil government. In the second 
century there came the deadly contests with the French and 
Indians, soon after to be followed by the long and desperate 
struggle for independence. During much of this period 
the people guarded their homes, their churches and their 
schools with musket always at hand. Without compunc- 
tion they exterminated Indians, for otherwise they them- 
selves would have vanished from off the earth. Taxation 
was heavy ; the people were poor ; and educational prog- 
ress was of necessity slow and irregular. But it was 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS 



31 



during this very period of neglect by the mother country 
and misrule by royal governors, that in New England 
the common schools took root and grew strong. Almost 
from the beginning these schools were kept under direct 
control of town officers, or under the decision of a general 
town meeting, or the democratic vote of a school-district 
meeting. If in the beginning the schools were enveloped 
in an atmosphere more or less ecclesiastical, it should be 
remembered that deep religious convictions constituted 
the strength of Puritan character. If at first the right of 
voting was limited exclusively to church members, the 
elective franchise was soon extended to all town free- 
holders. If some of the schools at first were partly sup- 
ported by tuition fees, they soon became free, and at all 
times received pupils without distinction of class or caste, 
and, in rural districts, without distinction of sex. The 
fact that these primitive common schools survived in the 
struggle with private schools and denominational institu- 
tions proves their adaptation to the needs of a free people. 
The Colonial Crisis. — For more than a century these 
schools gave to the great mass of the common people a 
fair elementary education. Then there came the great 
colonial crisis which summoned men to arms against the 
oppression of the mother country. The minute-men 
who rushed into battle at Lexington, and Concord, and 
Bunker Hill, had been trained to arms in the French and 
Indian War, and drilled into intelligent patriots in the 
common schools. They knew what they were fighting 
for. These '* embattled farmers " stood by Washington 
in the siege of Boston, and drove out the British troops 
and a thousand colonial *' tories," who sailed away to 
Halifax on board the British fleet. They followed their 
great commander to New York, and Trenton, and Valley 



32 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Forge. They enlisted for the war in the Continental 
Army, and when, after the final triumph at Yorktown, 
that army was disbanded, they constituted, according to 
the records of the war department, a majority of the rank 
and file of the veterans of the war. No wonder the great 
Virginian exclaimed : " God bless the New England 
troops! " 

But the New England troops did not stand alone in 
the long battle for independence. The Continental Con- 
gress, on the 14th of June, 1775, made the beginning of a 
regular army by enacting " that six companies of expert 
riflemen be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in 
Maryland, and two in Virginia. These were the first 
troops levied by direct act of Congress. It was a call to 
frontiersmen of the Alleghanies who were experts in the 
use of the famous backwoods rifle, and were trained in 
Indian warfare. The hardy pioneers of western Pennsyl- 
vania had met in a public meeting at Hanover, June 4, 
1774, and passed defiant resolutions, the last of which read 
as follows : " 4th. That in the event of Great Britain 
attempting to force unjust laws upon us by the strength 
of arms, our cause we leave to Heaven and our rifles." 

'* On the 1 8th of July, 1775, the first company of rifle- 
men, Nagel's Berks County ' Dutchmen', arrived at 
Cambridge, and within less than sixty days from the date 
of the resolution of Congress, 1430 backwoodsmen, 
instead of the 810 required, had been raised, equipped by 
themselves, and had joined the army before Boston, after 
marching from four to seven hundred miles over difficult 
roads — all without a farthing being advanced by the Con- 
tinental treasury." ^ 

1 '• The Birth of the American Army," by Horace Kephart, Harper's 
Maj^azine, May, 1899. 



COLONIAL SCHOOLS 33 

The riflemen of Western Virginia and Maryland re- 
sponded to the call with equal promptness. Daniel 
Morgan, just returned from an Indian war, led the Vir- 
ginians. 

" About two-thirds of the riflemen were of Scotch-Irish descent," 
says Kephart, " and nearly all of the remainder were ' Pennsylvania 
Dutchmen ' — that is to say, of Swiss or Palatine origin. Many of the 
Marylanders and Virginians were immigrants from western Pennsyl- 
vania. The famous rifle corps which Morgan afterwards formed from 
marksmen picked from the whole army is usually referred to as ' Mor- 
gan's Virginians,' but, as a matter of fact, two thirds of them were 
Pennsylvanians. including a considerable number of Penns)4vania 
Germans. . . . When Washington, one day riding along his lines, saw 
the fringed hunting-shirts of the Virginians approaching, the reserve 
of his naturally undemonstrative nature broke down. At the sight, he 
stopped : the riflemen drew^ nearer, and the commander, stepping in 
front, made the military salute, exclaiming, ' General, from the right 
bank of the Potomac ! ' Washington dismounted, came to meet the 
battalion, and going down the line with both arms extended shook 
hands with the riflemen one by one, tears rolling down his cheeks as 
he did so." 

These hardy sharpshooters did effective service in the 
siege of Boston. They enlisted in the Continental Army 
and fouo-ht during the war or fell on the field of battle. 

AM. PUB. SCH. X 



CHAPTER II 

EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 

The seven years' war for independence was a trying 
time for the people of the new repubHc or confederation. 
Boston, New York, and Philadelphia were successively 
occupied by British armies. Commerce was interrupted 
or suspended, taxation was high, and " hard times " every- 
where prevailed. From the close of the Revolutionary 
War to the ratification of the Constitution and the inaug- 
uration of Washington, there was also a seven years' period 
of political unrest, of scarcity of coin and superabundance 
of depreciated paper money, of high taxation, of general 
poverty and dissatisfaction. 

A general census taken in 1790. one year after the final ratification 
of the Constitution by nine states, showed the population of the United 
States to be 3,929,000. At this time Virginia had 747,000 inhabitants, 
or about one-fifth of the entire population of the whole country. 
Massachusetts, including the Province of Maine, had, in round num- 
bers, a population of 475,000 ; Pennsylvania, 434,000 ; North Carolina, 
394,000 ; New York, 340,000 ; Maryland, 320,000 ; South Carolina, 
240,000; Connecticut, 238.000; New Jersey, 184,000; New Hamp- 
shire,, 142,000; Rhode Island, 69,000; Georgia, 82,000; Delaware, 
59,000; Kentucky (soon after admitted) 74,000 ; and Vermont, 85,000, 

The New England States together had a population of 
a little more than one million ; the four Middle States had 
a little less than a million ; and the Southern States footed 
up 1,657,000 inhabitants, including negro slaves as *' per- 
sons." 

In 1786, four years before this first general census, the 

34 



EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



35 



population of the three great commercial cities of the 
country ranked as follows : Philadelphia, 32,205 ; New 
York, 24,500 ; Boston, 14,640. At the beginning of the 
Revolution the population of the colonies was estimated 
at 2,750,000; at the close (1783) 3,250,000. 

The preceding statistics will show, in part, the general 
conditions under which the several states began to turn 
their attention to the organization of public schools. At 
this time there were in this country no steamboats, no 
railroads, and no canals. Roads were bad, and land trans- 
portation was slow and costly. A few small cotton mills 
and woolen mills in Massachusetts and Rhode Island had 
just been set up with rough imitations of the spinning and 
weaving machinery used in England. Arkwright's great 
invention of the spinning-jenny had been jealously guarded 
by the British government, and it was not until eighteen 
years afterwards that the first rough drawings were se- 
cured in America. At length, William Somers, of Balti- 
more, went to England and brought back models and de- 
scriptions of machines for carding and spinning wool. He 
applied to the legislature of Massachusetts for aid in set- 
ting up his models, and was granted $100 for that purpose. 
Application was also made in behalf of two Scotchmen by 
the name of Barr, who had some knowledge of the spin- 
ning-jenny. '* The General Court voted to the Barrs," 
says John Bach McMaster, '' six tickets in a State Land 
Lottery, and out of the money they drew, the first stock- 
card and spinning-jenny in the United States was made. 
It was not, however, till Washington had been one year 
president that Samuel Slater put up, in the workshops of 
Almy & Brown, the first series of machines worthy to be 
called copies of the famous inventions of Arkwright." 

1 McMaster's " History of the Peo})le of the United States." 



36 HIS TOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Thus were made the beginnings of cotton factories and 
woolen mills, that soon brought about a radical change in 
the industrial conditions of New England, and led up to 
the rapid growth of cities, towns, and villages, and an 
era of unexampled financial and commercial prosperity. 
These new industrial conditions, in turn, soon led to a 
corresponding development of common schools. About 
this time, also, there came the invention of the cotton-gin 
by Eli Whitney, of Connecticut (1792), which greatly 
stimulated the production of cotton, and laid the founda- 
tion of the wealth, power, and prosperity of the cotton- 
growing states of the South. In 1786, the Continental 
Congress formally adopted a decimal system of currency, 
but the people were reluctant to change their local cus- 
toms and usages in money matters. The act creating the 
United States Mint was not passed until 1792, and the 
first regular issue of money was the copper cent of 1793. 
Meantime all kinds of European coins, bogus coins, and 
depreciated paper money, were used as a circulating me- 
dium. The United States Patent Office was established 
by act of Congress, April 10, 1790, and to Thomas Jef- 
ferson is due the honor of securing- it. 
/ After the adoption of the Constitution, the inaugura- 
tion of Washington, and the funding of the national debt 
by the wise policy of Alexander Hamilton, the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, the new nation entered upon an 
era of great industrial prosperity and rapid expansion of 
territory. The people had cut loose from the civil gov- 
ernment of the mother country, and from English educa- 
tional ideals. Colonial schools began a slow evolution 
into an American system of public schools adapted to the 
changed civil conditions under a republican form of gov- 
ernment. The separation of State from Church was fol- 



EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



37 



lowed by the gradual release of schools from denomina- 
tional control. Within a decade after the inauguration of 
Washington, new constitutions were adopted by eight 
states, in which the right of suffrage was greatly extended, 
and religious tests were either modified or abolished. 
The war of 1 812- 15 greatly intensified the American dem- 
ocratic spirit, especially in the valley of the Mississippi. 

State Control of Schools. — The new Constitution con- 
tained no section on public education. Educational con- 
ditions in the thirteen original states were so divergent 
that it would have been impossible for the delegates in the 
Constitutional Convention to agree on any educational 
provision. At this period the idea of universal education 
had not entered into the minds of statesmen. Thus the 
maintenance of public schools was left as a matter of state 
rights. Of the state constitutions that were framed soon 
after the Declaration of Independence, only five mentioned 
education, and only two contained school provisions of 
any practical value. Thus the establishment and main- 
tenance of schools were left to enactments by state legis- 
latures. These enactments, in turn, were at first only 
general outlines, so that the direct government of the 
schools was long left, as in colonial times, mainly to the 
local regulations of city, county, town, or district, — that 
is, under immediate control of the people. 

LAND RESERVATIONS FOR SCHOOLS. 

The Old Northwest. — Virginia (1784) ceded to the 
general government her shadowy title to wild lands ex- 
tending westward to the Mississippi, with the exception 
of the Virginia Military Bounty Lands in the Northwest 
Territory. Connecticut yielded her claims, with the ex- 



38 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

ception of the Western Reserve. New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, Massachusetts, North Carolina and South Carolina, 
Maryland and Georgia, one by one reluctantly gave up 
their somewhat indefinite claims to other parts of the 
western wilderness. It consequently became necessary for 
Congress to outline a plan for governing this vast extent 
of territory and for disposing of the public lands. Fortu- 
nately for common schools and state universities the policy 
pursued was wise and far-reaching. 

The ordinance of 1787, entitled ** An Ordinance for the 
Government of the Territory of the United States North- 
west of the River Ohio," passed July 13, by the Con- 
tinental Congress, established the territory as one dis- 
trict, but provided for its future subdivision into '* not 
less than three nor more than five states." It prohibited 
primogeniture by providing that the estates of deceased 
persons should '' descend to and be distributed among 
their children and the descendants of a deceased child in 
equal parts ; " and secured to the widow of the deceased 
" her third part of the real estate for life, and one third 
part of the personal estate." And '' for extending the 
fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty, to fix 
and establish those principles as the basis of all laws, con- 
stitutions, and governments, which forever hereafter shall 
be formed in the said territory," it ordained a bill of rights 
in six articles. 

Article First declared that no " person demeaning himself in a 
peaceable and orderly manner shall ever be molested on account of his 
mode of worship or religious sentiments, in the said territory." 

Article Second secured the writ of habeas corpus and the right of 
trial by jury ; and declared that " No law ought ever to be made which 
should interfere with or affect private contracts or engagements, bona 
fide, and without fraud, previously formed." 

Article Third declared that " Religion, morality, and knowledge, be- 



EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 3^ 

ing necessan^ to good government and the happiness of mankind, 
schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged." 

Article Sixth, most important of all for the future of the United 
States, read as follows : " There shall be neither slavery nor involun- 
tary servitude in the said territory, otherwise than in the punishment of 
crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted : Provided, 
always, That any person escaping into the same, from whom labor or 
service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original states, such fugi- 
tive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming 
his or her labor or service as aforesaid." 

Ten days after the passage of this famous ordinance, 
there was passed a supplementary act relating to the 
survey and sale of public lands, ivliicJi reserved the \6tk 
section (640 acres) of each township for the support of 
common schools, and also set apart two townships (46,080 
acres) '' to be given perpetually for the purposes of a 
seminary of learning [or university], to be applied to the 
intended object by the legislature of the state." This 
reservation of two townships in each future state for 
university purposes was secured, largely, through the ef- 
forts of Nathan Dane, Rufus King, Rufus Putnam, and 
Manasseh Cutler. 

Land System. — The beginning of the present land 
system of the United States had been made two years 
before, by act of Congress (May 20, 1785), under which 
government land was to be surveyed in townships of six 
miles square, laid off by meridian range lines and parallels 
of latitude. Each section included 640 acres, and each 
township 36 sections, or 23,040 acres. This land was to 
be sold for one dollar an acre, in tracts of not less than 
one entire section of 640 acres. Section 16 of each town- 
ship was to be reserved for common-school purposes, 
which provision was secured by Rufus King, a member of 
the Congressional committee, at the suggestion of Timothy 



40 



HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



Pickering.^ The committee report also contained a res- 
ervation of one section in each township for the purposes 
of religion, but this was stricken out by Congress. This 
reservation of the i6th section for common schools was 



6 

7 
i8 

19 
30 

31 


5 
8 

17 
20 

29 

32 


4 
9 
t 
21 

28 

33 


3 
10 

15 
22 

27 
34 


2 
II 

14 

23 
26 

35 


I* 
12 

^3 

24 

25 
36 



Diagram Showing the Division of a Township. 
* Section. t School Section. 

reaflfirmed in the land act of July 23, 1787, and supple- 
mented by the reservation of two entire townships in each 
new state to be formed out of the Northwest Territory, 
for university purposes. The sale of public lands was a 
vexed question in Congress until May 20, 1800, when a 
land act was passed on the recommendation of William 
Henry Harrison, then a delegate from the Northwest Ter- 
ritory. Among other things, this law provided that pub- 
lic lands should be sold at two dollars an acre, but only 
one twentieth was to be paid down at the time of purchase 
the remainder to be paid in installments running through 
five years. This act also provided for the opening of four 
government land offices in the western territory. Half a 
century later (1848) Congress enacted that in states there- 
after formed the 36th section, in addition to the i6th sec- 
tion, should be reserved for common school purposes. 

1 See McAlaster's " History of the People of the United States," 
Vol. III. 



EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



41 



The supplementary act of July 23, 1787, is often re- 
ferred to as a part of the ordinance of 1787, passed ten days 
before, on July 13th. It became a precedent for the rule 
afterwards followed in the organization of new states, 
though in a modified form after 1889. 

The passage of this ordinance was hastened, if not ab- 
solutely secured, by the demands of the disbanded veter- 
ans of the Continental Army, who had been paid off in 
certificates of indebtedness worth ten or twelve cents on 
the dollar. They had returned to their homes poor. 

In 1786 General Rufus Putnam and General Benjamin 
Tupper, both veterans of the Revolution, organized an as- 
sociation under the name of the " Ohio Company" and 
issued a circular addressed to officers and soldiers of the 
late army who might be, under the ordinance of Congress, 
entitled to lands in the Northwest Territory. The pur- 
pose of the Ohio Company was to raise a fund, not to ex- 
ceed one million of dollars, in depreciated continental cer- 
tificates, and with it to purchase and settle a tract of land 
in the *' Ohio Country." Putnam, Parsons, and Manasseh 
Cutler were made directors. Brigadier General Rufus 
Putnam was a graduate of a New England common school 
who had been successively a blacksmith, a millwright, an 
engineer, and an able military officer during the Revolu- 
tion. Dr. Manasseh Cutler started in life as a lawyer, 
then became a clergyman, an educator, and a shrewd busi- 
ness and political agent. Parsons and Cutler went on to 
New York city to make a business proposi|:ion to the 
Congress there in session. 

The members of Congress, anxious to sell the public 
lands, lent a ready ear to the claims of veterans of the 
war who wished to buy and settle on a part of the public 
domain. Cutler and Parsons proposed to buy one and a 



42 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

half million acres for one million dollars, to be paid for 
in government certificates at par value. 

But the conditions exacted were that civil rights should 
be guaranteed in the territory, and that slavery shotild be 
proJiibited. The committee, consisting of Carrington and 
Lee of Virginia, Nathan Dane of Massachusetts, Kean of 
South Carolina, and White of New York, reported a bill 
which was amended by the sixth article, prohibiting slavery, 
offered by Nathan Dane, and was passed by Congress, July 
13, 1787, with only one dissenting vote, and that vote 
was from the state of New York. The states that voted 
in favor of the sixth article were Massachusetts, New 
York, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, and Georgia. When the land contract 
was finally concluded with the of^cers of the Treasury, it 
included the sale of five millions of acres at two thirds of 
a dollar an acre, of which the Ohio Company took a mil- 
lion and a half acres, and other land operators secured 
three and a half millions of acres. ^ As United States 
certificates of debt were worth at that time only twelve 
cents on a dollar, the cash price in this great land transac- 
tion was eight or nine cents an acre. But it proved a 
good bargain for the United States. 

After the passage of this Magna Charta of land ordi- 
nances, the disbanded veterans of the Revolution took up 
their peaceful line of march into the wilderness of the 
Northwest Territory. The first band of settlers from 
New England numbered only forty-seven, not quite half 
the number of Pilgrims that landed at Plymouth 167 
years before. Under the leadership of Rufus Putnam 
this little company of pioneers started in November, 

1 For details of this transaction, see " McMaster's Histor)' of the 
People of the United States," Vol. I. 



EARL Y AMERICAN SCHOOLS 43 

wintered thirty miles above Pittsburg on the banks of the 
Youghiogheny River, built a flat boat which they named 
the ** Mayflower," and early in April, floated down the 
Monongahela into the Ohio, and landed in the wilderness 
of the West, as their ancestors had settled the wilderness 
in the East. Dr. Manasseh Cutler soon despatched a 
second party of settlers who followed in the wake of 
Putnam and united with the first expedition in the set- 
tlement of Marietta in Ohio. The^e pioneers carried 
town government and the common school into the North- 
west Territory and founded a " Greater New England " in 
the heart of the Mississippi Valley. The eastern contin- 
gent was swelled by veterans of the Revolution from New 
York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. It is 
estimated that ten thousand emigrants poured into the 
Ohio region during the year 1788; and in ten years it 
was fortified by log schoolhouses and made sure forever 
to free labor. 

SCHOOLS IN THE NORTHWEST TERRITORY. 

Ohio became a state in 1802 ; Indiana in 18 16; Illinois 
in 1818; Michigan in 1837; and Wisconsin in 1848. In 
these states the school land reservations were not immedi- 
ately available, but the recognition of public schools by 
the general government greatly stimulated the educational 
efforts of pioneer settlers. The money to pay the first 
teachers at Marietta, in Ohio, was sent on from Massa- 
chusetts by Dr. Manasseh Cutler. The first state school 
law in Ohio (1821), was modeled after that of New York. 
It provided for the subdivision of townships into districts, 
the appointment of school committee men, and the levy- 
ing of rate bills. Four years later (1825), the law was re- 



44 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

vised, and provision was made for levying a county tax 
for school purposes. In 1837 a state superintendent of 
schools was appointed by the legislature. In 1853 ^ ^^^^ 
was enacted making each township a school district, and 
creating a township board of education. This board was 
authorized to establish a high school in each township 
upon a majority vote of the people, and to levy a tax for 
its support not to exceed two mills on the dollar. As a 
result of this town provision, Ohio ranks as one of the 
foremost states in respect to the number and excellence 
of high schools. The other states of this territory de- 
veloped their school systems later in time, but after the 
manner of Ohio. All had the usual number of private 
and denominational schools and colleges, but these were 
soon overshadowed by the rapidly developed common 
schools and high schools. Here, as in all the other new 
states of the West and the Pacific Coast, public education 
proceeded from the common school upward to the high 
school, and, finally, to the college and the free state uni- 
versity. The precedents of both Old England and New 
England were in a measure reversed. Up to this time it 
had been generally believed that the only possible scheme 
of education began with the foundation of the college or 
the university for educating the professional classes, which 
was afterwards to be extended downward through the 
Latin grammar school to the parish school, the charity 
school, or the common school for the mass of the people. 

^ SCHOOL LEGISLATION IN NEW ENGLAND. 

Taking up once more the subject of common schools in 
New England, we find that the Massachusetts law of 1789 
required " every town of one hundred families or upwards 
to maintain one school six months in the year, or two or 



EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



45 



more schools for terms that should together equal six 
months." Towns of two hundred families and upwards 
were also required to maintain a grammar school. 
This law required instruction in '' orthography, reading, 
writing, the English language, geography, and decent 
behavior." It ordained that the masters or mistresses of 
schools for primary instruction should be approved in 
respect to character and qualifications. It provided for 
official examinations of schools by the ministers, the 
selectmen, or a special school committee. It authorized 
the selectmen to divide the town into school districts. 
This law was. soon amended (1800), by empowering the 
district to levy a tax for building a schoolhouse ; was 
again amended ( 1 8 1 7), by making the district a corporation, 
with power to sue and be sued, etc. ; was further amended 
(1827), by requiring towns having districts to choose for 
each district a '' prudential committee man," who should 
have the care of school property and the power to ap- 
point teachers. The law allowed these committee men to 
be elected by vote of the electors in special district elec- 
tions, or to be appointed in the general town meeting. 
Most of the districts preferred to elect their own com- 
mittee man, who held office for the '' term of one year." 
Thus the school district became a political unit, subject 
only to the general state law. The amendments of 1827 
provided that the district schools should be maintained 
by a compulsory town tax. Notwithstanding some de- 
fects, this law contained several foundation principles, 
which were subsequently adopted by the other New Eng- 
land states, by New York, and by the Western states. 
In Massachusetts it was disastrous to many of the original 
town '* Latin grammar schools," but, on the other hand, 
it led to the foundation of academies. If these new insti- 



46 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

tutions fitted fewer boys for college, they recognized the 
hi<Ther education of girls, and took a strong hold on the 
common people. The academies, Avhen their usefulness 
came to an end, were superseded by high schools for both 
twirls and boys, with a classical course for some pupils and 
an English course for those who desired it. In fact, the 
experiments of the people under this law were only in- 
cidents in the great wave of American spirit that swept 
over the whole country. There had prevailed a strong 
tendency to local self-government, as opposed to central- 
ized power. On this point William T. Harris remarks : 
" The central power had been largely theocratic, or 
ecclesiastical, at the beginning. The reaction against 
ecclesiastical control went too far in the direction of in- 
dividualism. The farthest swing of the pendulum in this 
direction was reached in 1828, when the districts obtained 
exclusive control of the schools in all matters except the 
examination of teachers." 

In 1795 New York provided for the election of three 
district school trustees, having power to appoint teachers, 
build schoolhouses, etc. California, in 185 i, made a sim- 
ilar provision, which is still suited to existing conditions. 
In variously modified forms like provisions are now found 
in most of the states of the West and the Pacific Coast. 

Town or County. — In New England the town, from the 
beginning, was the unit of local civil government, the 
county being used for judicial purposes only. In the 
Southern states the county was the unit of government, 
the town being only an election district and the jurisdic- 
tion of a justice of the peace. These reversed conditions, 
though in modified forms, still exist at the present time. 
In New York, Pennsylvania, and the Western states there 
is a compromise of these two extremes. In a thickly 



EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



47 



settled manufacturing state, cities, villages, and towns 
are multiplied, and town government becomes relatively- 
strong. In sparsely settled agricultural states, the county- 
government dominates that of the town. It is evident 
that the school system must of necessity be developed 
along the lines of the civil government. The law of 1789 
in its amended forms served its purpose in Massachusetts 
for half a century, but as population became dense, as 
cities and villages sprang up, the tendency grew strong to 
revert to the original town schools under control of town 
government. The other New England states at various 
later periods followed the lead of Massachusetts. 

But under different civil conditions in the Middle, 
the Western, and the Pacific states, the district schools 
with local school trustees grew strong, and they still 
flourish with undiminished vigor. In twenty states dis- 
trict school trustees are elected by direct vote of the elec- 
tors in district elections.^ But they are now under the 
supervision of county superintendents, or county boards 
of education, and are governed by specific provisions of 
state law. In most of these states a heavy state property 
tax is levied for the support, in part, of common schools. 

Schools in Boston. — Turning again to schools in Boston 
we find that as late as 181 8 it was a law of the Common- 
wealth of Massachusetts that " No youth shall be sent to 
the grammar schools unless they shall have learned in 
some other school, or in some other way, to read the Eng- 
lish language, by spelling the same." 

" The laws likewise provided," says Wightman in his " Annals of the 
Primary Schools of Boston," " for the establishment of preparatory 
schools where grammar was not taught ; but to this time (181 8) there 

1 See " The Social Unit in the Public School System of the United 
States." Report of the Commissioner of Education, Vol. 2, 1895-96. 



48 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

were no public schools in Boston where children could be qualified for 
admission to the ' Grammar Schools.' The age at which they were 
eligible was fixed at seven years, and but few were ever admitted 
under that age. It was consequently necessary for parents to send 
their children \o private schools." 

Boston ill the year iSiowasa city of 33,250 inhabitants. 
" There are seven pubHc schools, viz. : one Latin gram- 
mar school, three English grammar schools, and three for 
writing and arithmetic, supported wholly at the expense 
of the town."-^ 

It was in 181 8, one hundred and eighty-eight years after 
the settlement of Boston, and four years before Boston 
became an incorporated city, that the selectmen of the 
town appointed, in answer to a petition from the people, 
a Primary School Committee to establish and control 
primary schools for children under seven years of age. 
Such schools were soon opened and made free to both boys 
and girls between four and seven years of age. '' At a legal 
meeting of the inhabitants of the town of Boston, held at 
Faneuil Hall, on Monday, the 31st day of May, A.D. 1819, 
the following report was read, accepted, and ordered to be 
printed and distributed for the information of the inhabit- 
ants. Attest, Thomas Clark, Town Clerk." So reads the 
town record. This report of the committee shows that 
they had established twenty schools and admitted to them 
over 1 100 children. The report further shows that wo- 
men were appointed as teachers, and that in most of the 
schools the girls were taught knitting or sewing as well 
as reading. The town of Boston at this time had about 
40,000 inhabitants. But however slow in providing for 
free primary schools, Boston finally took the lead in main- I 
taining free high schools ; in supporting modern graded 

^ Morse's Geography, Boston, i8i2. 



EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 4q 

grammar schools and primary schools ; and in building 
substantial and well planned schoolhouses. In 185 1 
Nathan Bishop became the first city superintendent of 
schools. He was succeeded by John D. Philbrick, who 
held the office for eighteen years, and by his wise admin- 
istration brought the Boston schools to a high degree of 
excellence. ' 

Parish Schools. — Connecticut was the only New Eng- 
land state that made the unfortunate experiment of sur- 
rendering, in part, the control of public schools into the 
hands of '* school societies." This experiment began in 
1712 by making the church parish a school district, and 
by putting into the hands of " school societies " the local 
management of schools, and school moneys. These 
" societies " were not strictly sectarian, but they had strong 
church affiliations. When the state had secured a school 
fund of one million of dollars derived from the sale of 
state lands in the Western Reserve, the income of this 
fund became a matter of importance to the school " so- 
cieties." Under the statute of 1794, the parish society 
schools received their /r^ rata of the state school moneys 
in common with town and district schools, but for the sole 
use of the schools, the parishes being compelled to make 
special application to the legislature for the use of any 
of the money for church purposes. This parish society 
scheme lingered along until the middle of the century, 
when it died out. But meanwhile, the common schools 
of this state had fallen below the standard maintained in 
other New England states. 

COMMON SCHOOLS IN NEW YORK. 

It was not until after the adoption of the Constitution 
that the state of New York took up in earnest the organ- 

AM. PUB. SCH. 4 



50 



HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



ization of common schools understate control. In 1795 
Governor George Clinton urged the establishment of com- 
mon schools throughout the state, and an act was passed 
by the state legislature " for the purpose of encouraging 
and maintaining schools in the several cities and towns in 
the state, in which the children of the inhabitants of the 
state shall be instructed in the English language, or be 
taught English grammar, arithmetic, mathematics, and 
such other branches of knowledge as are most useful and 
necessary to complete a good English education." Under 
this law each town was to elect three or more school com- 
missidners, empowered to license teachers and apportion 
public moneys. The people in each school district elected 
local school trustees empowered to employ teachers and 
provide for schools. This act also levied a state tax for 
the support of schools, to be continued for five years. This 
beginning was supplemented by the act of 18 12, which 
required that every town should be divided into school 
districts ; that each town should elect from one to six in- 
spectors, who with the commissioners were to examine 
teachers and supervise the schools. The law also created 
the ofifice of state superintendent of schools ; and Gideon 
Hawley, born in Connecticut, but a graduate of Union 
College, N. Y., was the first man appointed to fill the place. 
George Clinton, of Scotch-Irish stock, held the ofifice of 
governor of New York for seven successive terms of three 
years each, and during the whole period of tw^enty-one 
years was untiring in his efforts for common schools. 
The law of 1812 annually appropriated $50,000 to be dis- 
tributed pro rata among the counties of the state, and 
authorized the levy of a county tax equal to the state 
apportionment. 

County superintendents were appointed under the law 



EARL Y AMERICAN SCHO OLS 5 I 

of 1 841. A succession of able governors and secretaries 
of state carried on the good work. The state school laws 
became models for the new states of the Northwest. But 
in New York city, which was excepted from some of the 
vital ])rovisions of the state law, the schools under the 
control of " The Public School Society " remained in a 
condition of arrested development for many years. 

One of the most remarkable educators in New York 
during the formative period of common schools was Dr. 
Eliphalet Nott, who became president of Union College 
in 1804. Under his wise management a feeble denomi- 
national college became in a few years *' an American un- 
sectarian Christian University." There went out from 
this institution a long array of educators and public men. 
" It is doubtful," says Dr. Mayo, " if any American col- 
lege ever sent forth a larger number of influential men in 
public and professional life than Union during the sixty- 
two years' presidency of Dr. Nott. In Governor William 
H. Seward and in John C. Spencer, Secretary of State and 
Superintendent of Schools, he gave to New York the 
most important agents in the organization of the common- 
school system of the commonwealth." 

New York City. — The schools of New York city had 
a slow and complex evolution. At the time of surrender 
to the English (1664) there were in the town of New 
Amsterdam three public schools, a " Latin grammar 
school," and ten or twelve private schools. The Dutch 
schools were finally fused with English, but up to the 
close of the Revolutionary War public schools made little 
progress, while parish and private schools grew strong. 
In 181 3 a special state law for New York city directed the 
payment of state school moneys to " the trustees of the 
Free School Society and such incorporated religious so- 



52 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 







cietics as now support, or shall hereafter establish, charity 
schools within the said city." " The Society for Estab- 
lishing Free Schools in the City of New York for the 
education of such poor children as do not belong to or 
are not provided for by any Religious Society " had been 
chartered in 1805, and De Witt Clinton was elected as its 
first president. It established (i 806-15) three large schools 
on the "• Lancastrian System," an experiment imported 
from Eneland. 'In 1826 it was rechartered under the ab- 
breviated title of " The Public School Society," under 
which name it gradually gained practical control of the 
city public schools. It received tuition fees, public funds, 
and private contributions for the support of its schools. 
This "' society," though not strictly sectarian, had strong 
Protestant ecclesiastical affiliations, and this fact led to a 
demand that the Catholic parochial schools should share 
di pro rata division of the school funds. After much con- 
troversy, the state legislature decided against such division 
of the school fund, and passed the law of 1842, by which 
the public schools of New York city were placed under 
the direct control of the civil government. This law 
provided for the election of a New York city board of 
education ; and for local ward school trustees, and the 
establishment of schools directly under the control of the 
civil government. In 1853 the " society schools," which 
still maintained a lingering existence, were finally and 
effectually fused into modern public schools by state 
enactment. But the system included only primary and 
grammar schools, with the exception of one free academy 
for boys. This famous free academy, established in 1849, 
was chartered in 1866 under the name of '• Colleofe of the 
City of New York." It is a part of the public school 
system of the city, and is supported entirely by taxation. 



EARL V AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



53 



Tuition, books, and stationery are free. It stands as the 
first fully organized free public college in the United 
States, under municipal government and support. It has 
a strong pedagogical department. Its counterpart is 
found in the " New York Female College " (1870), which 
is a high-grade normal school for young women. In 
1867 rate bills for the partial support of rural common 
schools were abolished and the state property tax was 
raised to one mill and a quarter on a dollar. 

New Jersey. — This colony was settled by Swedes, 
English Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and Quakers, 
who brought with them preachers and teachers and estab- 
lished churches and schools side by side. As early as 
1676 public schools maintained by subscription began to 
be organized. In 1693 there appears on the statute book 
an act which authorizes, by local option, the people of any 
town, '' by the consent and agreement of the major part 
of the inhabitants," to employ a teacher and collect tuition. 
The College of New Jersey (now Princeton) had its begin- 
ning in 1747. In 1 8 16 a state school fund was established, 
and in 1820 there was enacted the first general law au- 
thorizing the township to raise money for the support of 
schools. In the general development of a common-school 
system this state followed the lead of New York, and 
Delaware that of Pennsylvania. 

PROGRESS IN PENNSYLVANIA. 

The revised state constitution (1790) contained a sec- 
tion which reads as follows : " The legislature shall, as 
soon as conveniently may be, provide by law for the es- 
tablishment of schools throughout the state in such man- 
ner that the poor may be taught gratis. The arts and 



54 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

sciences shall be promoted, in one or more seminaries of 
learning." It was not convenient for the legislature to 
carry this section into effect until twelve years later (i 802), 
w^hen a law was enacted entitled : " An act to provide for 
the education of the poor gratis." This law provided that 
parents too poor to pay tuition fees, could send them to 
school at public expense, on application to the proper 
authorities. Slightly amended in 1809, it remained in 
force for more than a quarter of a century. But the 
" pauper act " was unpopular. People disliked to declare 
their poverty, and children were unwilling to be called 
*' charity scholars." Meanwhile, denominational acade- 
mies and seminaries were aided by appropriations of pub- 
lic moneys. All these subsidized institutions were arrayed 
in open hostility to a system of American common schools. 

" For forty years after the organization of the state 
government, there were no laws enacted for the creation 
of a public-school system. ^ Nearly all the educational 
legislation was in favor of academies and seminaries. 
During this period many acts were passed favorable to these 
institutions, and nearly $300,000 were spent in their aid. 
In 1833 there were two universities, eight colleges, and 
fifty academies, all of which had been liberally aided by 
the state." 

It was not until 1834 that the state of Pennsylvania 
secured an effective school law. The conservatives and 
sectarians made desperate attempts to repeal this act at 
the next session of the legislature (1835), and the repeal 
was defeated only by the heroic efTorts of Thaddeus 
Stevens, then a member of the legislature. Thaddeus 
Stevens, born to poverty in Vermont, began his education 

1 See "Bulletin of Information" No. 9, 1890, by Dr. Frank W. 
Blackmar. 



EARL V AMERICAN SCHOOLS 5< 

in a country school, continued it in a country academy, 
worked his way through Dartmouth College, emigrated to 
Pennsylvania, succeeded in business, and represented his 
adopted state in the senate of the United States. 

The ** Agricultural College of Pennsylvania" became 
fully established in 1862. It had its beginning in the 
*' Farmer's High School " (1854) and changed its name 
when the state came to its aid to the extent of $100,000. 
The land grants of 1862 came to its aid, and its name was 
changed to " Pennsylvania State College." 

Philadelphia Schools. — The city of Philadelphia was 
slow in providing schools for the children of the common 
people. Private schools and society schools long stood 
in the way of free public schools. In 181 2 the common 
council was authorized by state law to establish common 
schools, but nothing was done until five years later, when 
the " Society for the Promotion of Public Economy " was 
organized. Public schools modeled after the Lancastrian 
(monitorial) system of England were finally established. 
These schools for the poor were cheap, but not good. At 
this time the embargo and the war with England (1812- 
15) had crippled the commerce of Philadelphia, New York, 
Boston, and all the other seaport towns, and thousands of 
their inhabitants had been reduced to poverty. When 
"hard times " came on, the prisons of all these cities were 
crowded with thousands of debtors. The semi-barbarous 
English laws of imprisonment for debt were established 
during colonial times, and were kept on the statute books 
of all the states long after this period. 

" By an old law which went back to the days when Pennsylvania 
was a colony," says McMaster,^ " magistrates were allowed cognizance, 

* McMiister's " History of the People of the United States." Vol. IV. 



56 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

without appeal, of debts under forty shillings or five dollars and thirty- 
three cents in amount. When the indebtedness exceeded that paltry 
sum the debtor was allowed a stay of proceedings. But no such hap- 
piness awaited the poor wretches who owed a sixpence or a shilling, 
and who each year were dragged to prison by thousands, on what 
were truly called " spite actions." Murderers and thieves, forgers and 
counterfeiters, were fed, clothed, and cared for at the expense of the 
state ; but for the unhappy man whose sole offence was his inability 
to pay a trifling debt of a few cents, no such provision was made. The 
food he ate, the sheets that covered him, the medicine he took — nay, 
the very rags he wrapped about his sores — were provided, if provided 
at all, by his friends, by the public, or by some Humane Society or 
Society for Alleviating the Miseries of Public Prisons." 

In 1794, this law was amended by ordering that the prison inspector 
should provide fuel and blankets for the poorest prisoners, make an 
allowance of seven cents a day for food and charge it to the creditor, 
but the main part of the statute remained in force. 

Things were no better in the city of New York. In 
18 1 7 there were 1984 debtors confined during the year ; 
and of these 729 were imprisoned for debts less than 
$25. During the period of hard times one in every 
seven of the inhabitants in this city was wholly or in part 
supported by charity. In Boston the condition was quite 
as bad. During the fifteen months from January i, 1820, 
to April I, 1822, 3492 men and women were imprisoned 
for debt, of which number 2000 were thrown into jail for 
sums less than $20. One debtor had been in prison for 
thirty years. Another froze to death in the jail at Cam- 
bridge. In each of these three great cities of this country, 
the jails and penitentiaries were exceeded in wretchedness 
and filth only by the debtor prisons in London, so real- 
istically pictured by Charles Dickens. 

But such awful conditions could not long continue. 
One by one, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Vermont, and 
Massachusetts, in the period from 1817 to 1825, prohibited 



I . EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS t^j 

imprisonment for small debts in sums varying from thir- 
teen to twenty-five dollars. After this time, the constitu- 
tions of the new states of the West prohibited imprison- 
ment for small debts, — an evidence of a great advance in 
civilization. 

During the period of demoralization, the cities were full 
of dramshops, and drunkenness was a prevailing vice. 
Lotteries were universal. They were authorized by state 
law, and even started in aid of colleges, churches, schools, 
and many other purposes. But at length the tide of re- 
form set in. The bloody criminal code of England which 
had been fastened on the colonies was ameliorated, and 
the number of crimes punishable with death was reduced 
from fifteen and thirty to two or three. The bands of 
idle boys prowling in the streets for evil, were gradually 
gathered into public schools. This episode in the history 
of the civil and social conditions of that period shows 
why common schools made but little headway in the 
great cities, and why state legislation was so long 
delayed. 

The city of Philadelphia finally established common 
schools, which educated the children of the common 
people without distinction of class, caste, or charity, but 
the evolution was slow. The city remained without a 
superintendent of public schools until 1883, when the 
office was created and James McAllister was appointed to 
reorganize and modernize the city school system. He did 
the work well. 

One of the most notable educational bequests ever made 

in this country was the foundation of Girard College, 

I' with an endowment of several millions of dollars, by 

I Stephen Girard. It was established as a home for orphan 

boys where they should be trained and educated for the 



58 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



practical pursuits of life. The course of instruction 
adopted for Girard College was the first practical and 
potential protest against the conventional educational 
formalism of those days. 

EDUCATION IN THE SOUTHERN STATES. 

Virginia. — We have seen that, during the colonial 
period, education was provided for in Virginia after the 
manner in England, by means of parish schools, private 
schools, academies, and the endowed College of William 
and Mary. Though Jefferson failed in his plans to pro- 
vide schools for the education of the common people, he 
succeeded, after a quarter of a century of untiring efforts, 
in organizing the University of Virginia, whicji was opened 
in 1825, one year before the death of its illustrious 
founder. The distinguishing features of this institution 
were worthy of the great statesman who planned them. 
The University provided for elective courses of study ; 
the honor system of discipline ; the voluntary system of 
religion ; and the prohibition of merely honorary titles. 

The state school law of 1820, however, provided that 
the county could be divided into school districts of six 
miles square. If the people of the district raised three 
fifths of the sum required to build a schoolhouse, the re- 
maining two fifths might be appropriated from the state 
** literary fund." But the small income, — $45,000 a year 
from the interest of the state school fund, — could do but 
little in establishing a public-school system. In the west- 
ern part of this state the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians — those 
" Puritans of the South " — supported their church schools 
with their accustomed zeal. From these people sprang 
the Breckenridgcs, the McDowells, the Pickenses, and 



EARL Y AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



59 



many other prominent families in the South. Emigrants 
of this sturdy stock poured into Kentucky and Tennessee 
in early days, and became prominent in fighting the 
Indians and in establishing schools. 

A century after the rejection of Jefferson's plans for 
public schools, — at the close of a war greater than that of 
the Revolution, — Virginia fell into line and established a 
system of American free public schools. 

Most of the other Southern states followed the lead of 
Virginia. Efforts were made (1810-30), to secure State 
School Funds, the interest of which should be applied to 
said rural public schools and subsidize county academies 
Several states attempted to establish schools for educating 
*'the children of the poor." Maryland subsidized from a 
scanty school fund a small number of county academies 
of the classical type. The city of Baltimore experimented 
with a Lancastrian school in 1820 ; made in 1830 a 
beginning of public schools; and in 1839 opened a high 
school. 

South Carolina. — South Carolina, in 1801, established 
the College of South Carolina, appropriated $50,000 for 
buildings, and $6000 annually for its support. The 
academies and private schools in Charleston were good, 
but, prior to 1730, there were no grammar schools in the 
state, and in 1776 there were only five. The Huguenots 
and Scotch-Irish that settled there were active in support 
of education, and both races stamped their impress on the 
educational, social, and political institutions of the state 
and the nation. The first public school movement in this 
state was made by an act of the legislature (181 1), which 
created a free-school fund with the proviso '' that the use 
of this fund should be confined to educating the children 
of the poor in case it was not adequate for all." The few 



6o History of American public schools 

schools that were established under this act were made 
unpopular by the charity proviso. " The annual appro- 
priation by the state, which, for a period of forty years, 
averai^ed $37,000 a year," says Dr. Mayo, *' was of itself a 
pittance for the education of at least 50,000 children and 
youth in need of elementary schooling." In 1868 the 
new constitution provided for a uniform system of public 
schools supported by taxation. 

Georgia. — Georgia, the latest settled of the thirteen 
original states (1732), had a comparatively slow growth 
both in population and schools. The English settlers 
were reinforced by large numbers of Scotch-Irish Presby- 
terians, and the usual number of Episcopal and Presby- 
terian parish schools and denominational academies were 
opened, as in other Southern states. In 1784 the Uni- 
versity of Georgia was endowed by a state grant of 40,- 
000 acres of wild lands, worth perhaps a thousand dol- 
lars ; and a land grant of 1000 acres was offered to each 
county to aid in opening an academy. Most of the in- 
come from a small state school fund was used in subsidiz- 
ing academies, seminaries, and other private institutions, 
leaving but a pittance to the elementary schools for teach- 
ing ** indigent children " to read and write. Richard 
Malcolm Johnson has written a graphic history of early 
schools in middle Georgia, which is well worth reading by 
the historical student.-"- 

North Carolina. — North Carolina secured a state school 
fund (1825-40) of two millions of dollars, and then dis- 
tributed the annual income in aid of county district 
schools, thus making a nearer approach to common schools 
than any other Southern state. This state was strong 
in small private incorporated academies. During the 

^ See Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1894-95, Vol. 2. 



EARL V AMERICAN SCHOOLS 6l 

period from 1760 to 1825, more than 150 of these 
academies were incorporated. Into the middle and 
western parts of this state and the Piedmont region there 
was a steady stream of Scotch-Irish settlers, and of Ger- 
mans and Quakers from Pennsylvania. These Scotch- 
Irish Presbyterians, Moravians, Lutherans, and Friends 
set up their churches and church schools and maintained 
both with great zeal. The University of North Carolina 
was chartered in 1789 and opened in 1795. It is well to 
remember that the Scotch-Irish settlement of Mecklen- 
burg, in a public meeting on the 20th of May, 1775, made 
the first public declaration, in the form of resolutions, 
that the Americans were " a free and independent people." 
In 1840 this state had 141 academies and grammar schools 
and 632 primary and common schools. In i860 the num- 
ber of primary schools had increased to 4000, with an 
attendance of 160,000 pupils. 

" This state is also conspicuous," says Commissioner 
Harris, " for the advanced position it occupied in matters 
of education in the constitution adopted in 1776, in the 
early chartering and opening of its State University, in 
the breadth of the educational thought shown by Archi- 
bald D. Murphey, the father of her common schools, and 
in the administration of Rev. Calvin H. Wiley, her first 
general superintendent. This state, too, was alone among 
the Confederate states, in keeping her schools open dur- 
ing the war." 

Rural Schools of the South. — Even the primitive "■ old 
field," or neighborhood, rural schools of North Carolina, 
Virginia, and other Southern states deserve to be held in 
grateful remembrance, along with incorporated academies 
and endowed colleges. These schools, like those of New 
England in early days, enabled many boys, born to pov- 



62 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

erty, but gifted with power, to make a start in life and 
fight their way in the world. 

It was in one of these schools in North Carolina that a 
sandy-haired lad of Scotch-Irish descent, named Andrew 
Jackson, learned "to read and write and cast accounts," 
otherwise he would never have been heard of among men. 
Though born to poverty, he was richly endowed by 
heredity with the qualities that command leadership. His 
real education was mainly acquired by the study and prac- 
tice of law. In the state of Tennessee, to which he emi- 
grated, he rose to leadership in political and military 
affairs. In the War of 1 8 12 he was the one man in the 
nation best fitted to take command of the western fron- 
tiersmen, and to beat back the British army of trained 
veterans at New Orleans. His election as President of 
the United States marked the growing political power of 
the West, and the birth of an American spirit of demo- 
cracy as a reaction against the federalism of New England 
and the British conservatism of Virginia. This awaken- 
ing of the common people gave a fresh impetus to com- 
mon schools in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, and 
other states soon to be formed out of the Northwest 
Territory. 

John C. Calhoun, of Scotch-Irish descent, born in South 
Carolina, educated at Yale, and bred under the influence 
of the old regime of his native state, lived to become the 
great political leader of the old South. His career, com- 
pared with that of Andrew Jackson, affords a striking 
illustration of the effect of different environments. 

A generation later, James K. Polk, born in North Caro- 
lina, of Presbyterian Scotch-Irish stock, studied law, emi- 
grated to Tennessee, rose to leadership, and became Presi- 
dent of the United States. Here, also, was born Thomas 



EARLY A.UEJilCAN SCHOOLS 



63 



H. Benton. He too emigrated to Tennessee, studied law, 
served under General Jackson at New Orleans, removed 
to St. Louis, and represented Missouri for thirty years 
in the senate of the United States. 

Henry Clay, of English stock, born to poverty in Vir- 
ginia, obtained a limited school education in Peter Dea- 
con's log-cabin schoolhouse, which had no floor but the 
earth and no window but the door. He earned his living 
at an early age as clerk in a law office, studied law, and 
emigrated to Kentucky. Gifted by nature with a winning 
manner and great power of oratory, he became a political 
leader in the senate of the United States. 

From this state, also, came William Henry Harrison, of 
notable English descent. Educated in Hampden-Sidney 
College, he entered the army as an ensign, and was 
ordered to the West, where he combined a military with 
a civil career. He was appointed as the first secretary of 
the Northwest Territory, then territorial delegate to Con- 
gress, next, governor of Indiana Territory, and was finally 
elected President of the United States. 

Abraham Lincoln, whose ancestors dwelt in Virginia, 
was born to the hardships and poverty of pioneer life in 
Kentucky. His school education was limited to reading, 
writing, and arithmetic, which he learned during a few 
months' attendance in the primitive schools of that period. 
He emigrated to Illinois, earned his living by farm work 
and other occupations, educated himself by the study and 
practice of law, and became one of the greatest of Amer- 
ican presidents. 

The lives of this group of leaders among men make an 
interesting study on the comparative effects of heredity, 
school education, and environment. Washington, Jeffer- 
son, John Marshall, Patrick Henry, John Tyler, and 



64 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Andrew Johnson make another group worth special con- 
sideration as a psychological study. 

Besides these few notable men, there went out from 
these states into the wilderness of Kentucky, Tennessee, 
and the Northwest Territory, thousands of hardy pioneers 
of the type of Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and George 
Rogers Clark. They wenj; there in search of new homes 
on fertile lands, and because there was little chance for 
them to make their way in the older settlements. These 
constituted the advance guard of civilization. They 
fought the Indians, subdued the wilderness, and helped to 
lay the foundation of civil government and common 
schools in the states of the West. Though most of them 
had but scanty schooling, and some of them none at all, 
they made a success of life under new conditions. 

THE AGE OF ACADEMIES. 

The half century after the adoption of the Constitution 
was marked by great financial, commercial, and industrial 
prosperit}^ broken only by the war of i8 12-15, ^^d the 
financial panic of 1837. It was during this period that 
academies and seminaries were established to supplement 
the elementary instruction of the common schools. These 
academies were established in great numbers in all parts 
of the United States. In Massachusetts alone they num- 
bered nearly one hundred, and they were numerous and 
strong in New York, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. 
A few of these endowed institutions, like the Phillips- 
Exeter Academy (1781), in New Hampshire, and the 
Phillips-Andover Academy (1780), in Massachusetts, were 
preparatory schools exclusively designed to fit boys for 
college ; but, in general, they provided a course of study 



EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



65 



preparatory for college, and also a general educational 
course, largely elective. These academies were mainly 
supported by tuition fees, though often aided by state 
subsidies or individual bequests. They were governed by 
boards of trustees, were generally denominational in name, 
but liberal in management. They were, in fact, quasi 
public schools, as whatever endowments or state aid they 
received, reduced their rates of tuition. They were no 
longer modeled after English schools ; they were, like the 
common schools, American institutions. They were 
open, at least in New England, to both young men and 
young women, forerunners of the co-education of the sexes 
in modern high schools and state universities. They sup- 
plied teachers for the rural common schools. They 
trained, for two generations, the leaders in business. 
They recognized the higher education of women. After 
flourishing for more than half a century, they were grad- 
ually superseded, except in rural districts, by city and 
town high schools. 

Endowed Academies. — The first endowed academy in Massachusetts 
was the Dummer Academy at Byheld (1763.) Leicester Academy 
was incorporated (1784); Berwick (1791); Westfield (1793); Brad- 
ford (1803) ; Hampton, N. H. (1810). The first academy in New 
Hampshire for girls exclusively, was the endowed Adams Academy in 
the Scotch-Irish town of Londonderry, or Derry (1823) ; the first for 
girls in Massachusetts was at Ipswich (1823). The Troy Seminary 
(N. Y.) for young women, was opened in 1821, by Mrs. Emma Hart 
Willard. Mt. Holyoke Seminary for the education of young women 
was founded by Mary Lyon, at South Hadley, Mass., in 1836, 

Concerning the influence of academies in Massachusetts, George 
H. Martin in his Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School Sys- 
tem says : " Besides this work as fitting schools, the academies 
had an immeasurable influence in broadening non-college students. 
They reached an immense multitude of young people. Leicester had 
received from six to eight thousand pupils, of whom perhaps four 
AM. PUB. SCH. — 5 



66 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

hundred had been fitted for college : Westfield had over eight thou- 
sand persons ; Lawrence, at Groton, nearly eight thousand ; New 
Salem not less than seven thousand. In eighty or ninety years — three 
generations — these four schools alone had brought into a scholarly 
atmosphere, had kept under the instruction of scholarly men and 
w^omen, for a longer or shorter time, not less than thirty thousand 
young men and young women — ten thousand to a generation ; and 
these are only four of more than a hundred such schools." 

District Schools. — - The district schools and rural 
academies were adapted to the social and industrial con- 
ditions of the period in which they flourished. They 
turned out good American citizens. They brought the 
children of all classes together on one common footing. 
The strict discipline of the school was backed up by a 
firm home training. The value of an education was a 
common topic in every family. Parents saw to it that 
their children studied at home during the long winter 
evenings. The forehanded farmers sent all their children, 
boys and girls alike, to the district school ; they sent 
them, also, for a few terms to the academy ; they toiled 
and economized to send at least one son to college. 

HOME EDUCATION. 

In addition to the supplementary education furnished 
by the academy we must take into account the value of a 
correlative course of manual training in farm work »and 
domestic industries, which by industrial conditions was 
rigidly enforced on the great majority of the children 
during the period under consideration. Agriculture was 
the leading occupation of the people. For half the year at 
least the boys were kept at home hard at work in plowing, 
planting, hoeing, haying, harvesting, and taking care of 
live stock. The girls took a manual training course in 



EARL V AMERICAN SCHO OLS 6/ 

cooking, washing, mending, knitting, and sewing. Before 
the era of cotton factories and woolen mills, every farm- 
house contained a loom and a spinning wheel. The 
girls assisted their mothers in carding and spinning wool, 
in weaving it into cloth, and in making up clothing 
for the family. Thus both boys and girls were trained 
into steady habits of work. If they lacked somewhat in 
book knowledge, the loss was made up to them by a 
training in the practical duties of life. If this strict and 
sometimes over-exacting school and home training failed 
to develop the aesthetic side of human nature, it resulted 
in a stock of vital common sense as a guide in earning a 
living. 

" That our successful men have come so largely from the country," 
says Dr. John Dewey, " is an indication of the educational value bound 
up with participation in this practical Hfe. It was not only an ade- 
quate substitute for what we now term manual training, in the devel- 
opment of hand and eye, in the acquisition of skill and deftness ; but 
it was initiation into self-reliance, independence of judgment and ac- 
tion, and was the best stimulus to habits of regular and continuous 
work." Back of the common school and behind the home education, 
there lay, also, the strength of heredity transmitted from ancestors 
who loved liberty and prized learning. All these things were further 
supplemented by the strong social influences of the church, the town 
meeting, and the free discussion of public affairs. 

PRACTICAL VALUE OF THE COMMON SCHOOL. 

Horace Greeley was graduated from a district school into 
a printing office in the Scotch-Irish town of London- 
derry in New Hampshire. From a neighboring school 
district Colonel John Stark went out to the battle of 
Bunker Hill, followed, according to tradition, by all the 
able-bodied men in town, save only two. Later in the 



68 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

war the same townsmen followed General John Stark to 
the battle of Bennington. Generals John Sullivan, John 
Reid, and Alexander Scammell belonged to the same 
fifrhtincf stock and were trained in similar schools in 
neighboring towns. 

Benjamin Franklin when seven years old entered a 
Boston public school, left it at ten years of age, and 
began his great career as printer, statesman, and philoso- 
pher. George Peabody at eleven years of age left a 
Massachusetts common school to become, first a clerk in 
a small store, next a merchant, and finally the educational 
philanthropist who created the Peabody Southern Edu- 
cational Fund which has done so much to aid the 
establishment of common schools in the South. 

In the common school and rural academy of this same 
state Mary Lyon fitted herself for her great work in 
founding Mt. Holyoke Seminary and College for young 
women. Clara Barton, whose great work in the Red 
Cross Society is known to all the world, was educated in 
similar schools. 

In common school, academy, and Dartmouth College, 
Daniel Webster was trained. His father mortgaged the 
home farm to send Daniel to college, and his mother 
made for him with her own hands a homespun suit as an 
outfit. 

In an obscure common school in Massachusetts, Roger 
Sherman got all the school education of his life. By suc- 
cessive stages, he rose from the shoemaker's bench to 
become, first a county surveyor, next a lawyer, then judge 
of the Superior Court ; afterwards a member of the Con- 
tinental Congress, and member of the committee of five 
to draft the Declaration of Independence. 

But the greatest strength of the common schools con- 



EARL Y AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



69 



sisted in their power in molding the common people 
into intelligent and industrious citizens, many of whom, 
for successive generations, pushed out into the West 
and aided in the extension of free schools and free 
labor. 

The real power of this Republic consists, not in a few 
great statesmen, orators, or political leaders, not in a 
few highly educated philosophers or scientists, not in a 
few millionaires, but in the consolidated character, intelli- 
gence, and public opinion of the masses who cast the 
ballot on election days, who shoulder the musket and 
man the battleships in times of war ; of the men who in 
time of peace carry on the industrial pursuits of the 
nation ; of the women who protect the homes and 
educate the children, — and if these lack the wisdom of 
intelligence the republic will suffer harm in spite of the 
educated few. Neither does the wealth of this nation 
consist alone in real estate, agricultural products, manu- 
factures, and mines ; for all these material things only 
furnish the means for higher ends and a more complete 
civilization. The world has been enriched largely by the 
creative power of inventive genius ; and the great inven- 
tions — the steam-engine, the steamship, the railway, the 
cotton-gin, the spinning-jenny, the electric telegraph, the 
countless labor-saving machines in every department of 
industry — none of them were the blundering products of 
unskilled men held in the bonds of ignorance. Even 
the elective franchise is a menace to the republic unless 
the great majority of voters know how to think intelli- 
gently and act wisely in political affairs. The right of 
trial by jury — what is it but a shadow of justice when 
the jury box can be filled by the '' born thralls " of 
illiteracy ? 



70 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

THE PERIOD OF EDUCATIONAL REFORM. 

The decade of 1830-40 marks the beginning of a great 
educational awakening in the United States. In conse- 
quence of the rapid development of manufactures, com- 
merce, and means of transportation, there had begun a 
tendency of the population to concentrate in cities and 
villages. The urban population, which, in 1790, consti- 
tuted only one in thirty, had increased in 1830 to one in 
twelve. Changes in social and industrial conditions led to 
corresponding modifications of school laws and school or- 
ganization. The " age of homespun," the " old-fashioned 
district school," and the denominational academy began 
to fall into decadence together. 

It was at this period (1837) that Horace Mann appeared 
in Massachusetts as Secretary of the State Board of Edu- 
cation. '' He was," says William T. Harris, *' like so 
many of the great men of the Puritans, modeled on the 
type of the Hebrew prophets." He went out into all 
parts of the state as an educational missionary, lecturing 
to the people wherever he could gather them together, in 
hall, or meeting-house, or country schoolhouse, on the 
need of reforms in schools and school management. He 
advocated the consolidation of the independent school 
districts into township schools under the control of one 
central school committee ; the levy of town taxes for 
school purposes; the establishment of graded schools, nor- 
mal schools, and high schools; a higher standard for teach- 
ers* certificates; the addition of oral teaching to text-book 
memorizing ; institutions for the deaf and- dumb and 
blind ; special schools for the reformation of vicious chil- 
dren ; and he attacked the extreme severity of corporal 
punishment in the Boston schools. He wrote school re- 
ports so eloquent that they are still read as classic educa- 



EARLY AMERICAN SCHOOLS 



n 



tional literature. His fiery zeal roused the people to 
action. Henry Barnard took up the same work in Con- 
necticut, and the two greatest of early American educa- 
tional leaders together inaugurated a reform movement 
felt even in the remote states of the South and West. 
'' The school children of Massachusetts," says George H. 
Martin, " made no mistake when they placed in front of 
the capitol of the state a statue of Horace Mann, as of 
their benefactor and their ideal." 

The establishment of normal schools in Massachusetts 
and New York led to marked improvements, both in 
methods of teaching and in courses of study. New and 
improved text-books appeared ; city schools were graded ; 
and high schools began to be organized. School laws 
were amended. City, town, and county superintendents 
were appointed and school supervision was begun in 
earnest. Since that period of educational revival, there 
has been no reaction in the spirit of progress. 

THE GREAT NATIONAL CRISIS. 

We are apt to consider accomplished results rather than 
the remote causes which lead up to them. Seventy years 
after the adoption of the Constitution there came the great 
crisis in national affairs in which the stability of the Re- 
public was at stake. It was then that the beneficent re- 
sults flowing from the ordinance of 1787 were clearly 
made evident. The powerful and populous states, carved 
out of the Northwest Territory, which had been dedi- 
cated by law to freedom, gave to the nation that wisest of 
modern statesmen, Abraham Lincoln. The President's 
call to arms was answered by hosts of volunteers, made 
intelligent and patriotic citizens in the common schools, 
which had been fostered by the Magna Charta of 1787. 



72 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



In these public schools were trained, in their boyhood, the 
great military and civil leaders, — Grant, Sherman, Har- 
rison, Hayes, Garfield, and McKinley — better known but 
not more patriotic than the rank and file of the army. 
Shoulder to shoulder, with the common-school recruits 
from the older Eastern and Middle states, and the newer 
states of the Pacific, they fought through the war or fell 
on the field of battle, in defense of the Union. 

The spirit of these patriots is clearly set forth in Gen- 
eral Grant's address to his comrades, at Des Moines (1875), 
which reads, in part, as follows : '^ In this centennial year 
of our national existence, I believe it is a good time to 
begin the work of strengthening the foundation of the 
house commenced by our patriotic forefathers, one hun- 
dred years ago, at Concord and Lexington. Let us all 
labor to add all needful guarantees for the more perfect 
security of free thought, free speech, a free press, pure 
morals, unfettered religious sentiment, and of equal rights 
and privileges to all men, irrespective of nationality, color, 
or religion. Encourage free schools, and resolve that not 
one dollar of money appropriated to their support, no 
matter how raised, shall be appropriated to the support of 
any sectarian school. Resolved that either the state or 
nation, or both combined, shall support institutions of 
learning sufficient to afford to every child growing up in 
the land the opportunity of a good common-school edu- 
cation, unmixed with sectarian, pagan, or atheistical tenets. 
Leave the matter of religion to the family circle, the 
church, and the private school supported entirely by 
private contribution. Keep the Church and State forever 
separate. With these safeguards I believe the battles 
which created us ' the Army of the Tennessee ' will not 
have been fought in vain." 



CHAPTER III 

SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 

THE BEGINNINGS OF HIGH SCHOOLS 

Public High Schools. — We have seen that for more 
than a century the academy, the seminary, the private 
school, and the Latin grammar scliool furnished the 
means of secondary education as a supplement to the 
elementary common school, or as a preparation for col- 
lege. It was not until nearly the middle of the nine- 
teenth century that public high schools and public normal 
schools began to form an essential feature in public edu- 
cation. 

The modern free high school is a modified type of the 
academy and seminary of former times with traces of the 
early Latin grammar schools. Its distinctive points of 
difference from the older institutions are that it is under 
public management instead of denominational or private 
control, and is free from tuition fees. It came into exist- 
ence to meet the demands of modern life. It was not the 
work of the college or the university reaching downward ; 
nor was it the creation of speculative philosophers. It 
came naturally from the upward pressure of the common 
schools, and the demand of the masses of the American 
people for a free education of a grade higher than that of 
the common school. One of the functions of the high 
school is to fit pupils for the college or university; but 
its chief purpose is to give the great mass of pupils, after 

11 



74 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

they have completed the grammar school course, the 
means of acquiring an English education which shall 
better fit them for good citizenship and for the ordinary 
pursuits of life. 

Leaving out of consideration the colonial Latin schools, 
and other " grammar schools " of like type, the modern 
free high school may be said to date, in this country, from 
the establishment of the Boston English High School 
(1821), with George B. Emerson as head master, and a 
course of study which included, besides English, the 
French and Spanish languages, physics, mathematics, 
mental and moral philosophy, rhetoric, and general his- 
tory. 

Massachusetts in 1826 made the modern high school a 
part of the state school system by enacting a law that 
towns having at least 500 families should organize an 
English high school, and that towns having at least 4000 
inhabitants should establish a classical high school. In 
1840 this law was repealed, but was re-enacted in 1848. 
For some time the high school had to encounter the de- 
termined opposition of private preparatory schools, de- 
nominational academies and seminaries, denominational 
colleges, and many tax-payers. It took all the fiery zeal 
of Horace Mann and his co-workers to break down these 
antagonizing influences and finally to win a victoiy for 
the American people. 

The dates of the establishment of free modern high schools in the 
great cities afford a striking illustration of the slow evolution of this 
part of the American school system: — Boston (1821), English high 
school for boys, and (1825 and 1852) one ^ for girls; Philadelphia 
(1837), boys' high school, and (1840), a girls' high school; Buffalo 

1 Continued only one year and abolished because it was considered 
too expensive. 



SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 75 

high school (1838) ; Baltimore (1839), boys' high school; Providence 
(1843); Cincinnati (1847), Central high school ; New York city (1849), 
free academy for boys ; Cleveland high school (1852) : St. Louis 
(1853), high school for boys and girls ; Newark high school (1855) ; 
San Francisco (1856), English high school for boys and girls ; Chicago 
high school (1856) ; Detroit high school (1858) ; New York city 
(1870,) normal school for girls, and (1897) three modern high 
schools. 

In 1838 there were fourteen high schools in Massa- 
chusetts; in 1852, sixty-four; in i860, one hundred and 
two. But during the last half century, under the impera- 
tive demands of the people, the high school has been ex- 
tended not only into every city, but also into towns, 
villages, and rural districts, so that in 1897 no state 01 
territory was without one, except Alaska. 

According to the Report of the Commissioner of Edu- 
cation (1896-97), there were 5109 public high schools in 
the United States, of which, in part, Ohio had 576 ; In- 
diana, 343 ; New York, 341 ; Illinois, 323 ; Iowa, 322 ; 
Michigan, 280; Pennsylvania, 249; Massachusetts, 223; 
and other states in varying numbers from 218 in Nebraska 
to 2 each in Utah and Wyoming, 3 in the Territory of 
Oklahoma, and 3 each in Indian Territory and Arizona. 

In these public high schools there were enrolled 235,988 
girls and 173,445 boys, making a total of 409,433 students. 
Of this number the returns for 1897 show that only 12.17 
per cent, were preparing for college. 

In the total enrollment the state of New York reported 
38,957 students; Ohio, 37,958; Illinois, 31,909; Mas- 
sachusetts, 31,360; Michigan, 25,745 ; Iowa, 24,626; and 
Pennsylvania, 24,044. There were 627 high schools in 
cities having a population of 8000 or upwards, and 4,482 
in rural districts or in cities and towns with less than 
8000 inhabitants. In the 2100 private high schools, 



76 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

academies, and denominational institutions in the United 
States there was reported an enrollment of 107,633 
secondary students, or a little less than 21 per cent, as 
against 79 per cent, enrolled in the public secondary 
schools. The total number of secondary students in both 
public and private secondary schools shows that there is 
an average of 819 such students in every 100,000 of the 
population of the United States. In the department of 
higher education the ratio is 196 students to each 100,000 
inhabitants. 

High School Courses of Study. — It would be outside 
of the scope of this chapter to treat of high school courses 
of study, but I cannot forbear quoting a paragraph from 
the pen of Professor Paul H. Hanus, of Harvard Univer- 
sity, which presents a matter of vital importance to sec 
ondary schools. 

" The efforts to improve the secondary or high-school courses of 
study, like the corresponding efforts for the improvement of the gram- 
mar-school courses of study, have been directed to an enlargement of 
its scope (content) and such modification of its form as would best 
adapt it to modern needs. In bringing about these very desirable 
changes in the high-school course of study the West has rendered im- 
portant service. In those newer regions traditions have had less 
w^eight in determining educational practice, and the non-classical high- 
school courses have thrived there especially. A very important inci- 
dental gain, traceable largely to these modifications in the high-school 
course of study made in response to external demands, deserves to be 
noted here. These modifications have had much to do with insuring 
the permanence of the public high school as an integral part of our 
public-school systems. ... At the present time the public high 
school may justly be said to be firmly established throughout the coun- 
try. These are great gains. At the same time, however, another im- 
portant modification is gradually finding recognition in our secondary- 
school programmes. Not only may the pupil choose one of several 
courses of study offered to him in every considerable high school, but 



SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 



77 



choices are permitted within these courses, and there are schools — 
and the number of such schools is increasing — in which at least one 
course of study, the ' general course,' which is not determined by col- 
lege admission requirements, is entirely elective throughout. That is 
to say, not only does the modern high school aim to provide an intro- 
duction to the culture and training demanded by modern life, but in 
so doing it seeks also to adapt its opportunities and demands to the 
tastes and capacities of individuals. The importance of this change 
in our secondary-school opportunities it is difficult to overrate." i 

THE BEGINNINGS OF NORMAL SCHOOLS. 

The First Training Schools. — During the colonial 
period and for nearly half a century after, the common 
schools were mainly supplied with teachers by the acad- 
emy, the seminary, and the college. But after the war of 
1 8x2-1 5, the great increase of schools in commercial cities 
and manufacturing towns and villages, created a demand" 
for teachers having some special training for their work. 
Rev. Samuel R. Hall opened in the town of Concord, 
Vermont (1823), a private school for the training of 
teachers, which he continued for seven years. Mr. Hall, 
when a young man, teaching his first common school in 
the state of Maine (181 5), showed his radical tendencies 
towards innovations by introducing the writing of compo- 
sitions, which excited a storm of protests from parents and 
pupils. In 1829 he published one of the first notable 
American books on common school pedagogics, entitled, 
" Lectures on School Keeping." In 1830 he took charge 
of a teachers' department in the Phillips- A ndover Acad- 
emy, and also established a private normal school at 
Plymouth, New Hampshire. 

The state of New York made an experiment (1830-44), 

1 Educatiojial Review, December, 1896. 



78 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHO OLS 

in establishing teachers' departments in incorporated 
academies by a system of state appropriations for that 
purpose. Such departments were organized in sixteen 
academies, but the results fell short of expectations, and 
state aid was withdrawn on the passage of an act (1844), 
to establish a state normal school at Albany. 

Meanwhile, in New England, the normal-school idea 
was brought before the public by a group of educational 
reformers of remarkable ability and zeal. Among these 
were James G. Carter, Rev. Samuel R. Hall, George B. 
Emerson, Professor William Russell, Rev. Charles Brooks, 
Edmund Dwight, Thomas Gallaudet, Horace Mann, Henry 
Barnard, and many others. 

The American Journal of Education^ one of the first 
in the English language, appeared (1826), in Boston, 
edited by William C. Woodbridge, William Russell, and 
William A. Alcott ; the Massachusetts Common School 
Journal {i^^g), was started and edited by Horace Mann; 
the New York Common School Assistant (1836-40) was 
edited and published by J. Orville Taylor ; and a Con- 
necticut School Journal (1838), was edited by Henry 
Barnard. 

A society for the improvement of common scho(3ls was 
organized (1827), in Connecticut ; a similar society in 
Pennsylvania (1828) ; another in Ohio (1829) ; the Ameri- 
can Institute of Instruction, in Massachusetts (1830); the 
American Common School Society (1838), New York. 

All these combined influences resulted in the beginning 
of a great upward extension of the common-school system 
by including in it the public high school and the state 
normal school. 

Public Normal Schools. — The first public normal school 
in the United States was opened at Lexington, Massa- 



SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 



79 



chusetts (1839), with Cyrus Pierce as principal ; the second 
at Barre, Massachusetts (1839) ? the third at Bridgewater, 
Massachusetts (1840) ; the fourth at Albany, New York 
(1844) ; the fifth at New Britain, Connecticut (1849) 5 the 
sixth was established at Ypsilanti, Michigan (1850), but 
was not opened until two years later. At the middle of 
this century (1850), there were only six state normal 
schools in the United States. 

Concerning the immediate results of the three pioneer 
state normal schools in Massachusetts, Mr. George H. 
Martin says : ^ *' Their early graduates encountered every- 
where prejudice and suspicion, in many cases active and 
persistent opposition ; but steadily, year by year, they 
fixed themselves more and more firmly in public esti- 
mation and support." 

Since 1850 state normal schools have been rapidly 
multiplied and have become, like the high schools, an 
essential part of the public-school system. Local normal 
schools are maintained by the cities of New York, Phila- 
delphia, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Balti- 
more ; and many other cities have normal classes in con- 
nection with high schools. 

The total number of state and municipal public normal schools 
(1896-97) was 164. Of these schools Pennsylvania and New York 
had 14 each ; Massachusetts, 9 ; North Carolina, West Virginia, and 
Wisconsin, 7 each ; Alabama, Ohio, and Iowa, 6 each ; California, 5 ; 
and other states had varying numbers from 4 each in Maine and Con- 
necticut, to I each in New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma. The total 
enrollment in public normal schools was 43,197 students. In the 
public normal schools for colored students, the Southern States reported 
an enrollment of 1800. The number of graduates from public normal 
schools was 8,032, of which number 62.6 per cent, were women. The 

^ " Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School System " (1894). 



8o HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

aggregate amount of public appropriations for the support of these 
schools was nearly two and one-half millions of dollars. 

The public colleges and universities reported i ,839 normal students ; 
and public high schools having normal departments reported 9,001 
normal students. In 198 private normal schools there were 24,181 
students ; in private universities and colleges, 4,650, and in private high 
schools, 7,(^64. The aggregate of normal students in all public institu- 
tions was 54,039 ; in all private institutions, 35,895. 



STATE PUBLIC UNIVERSITIES. 

Colleges. — The colleges founded in colonial times and 
during the first half century after the Revolution were, 
in the main, denominational or non-public institutions, 
supported, like the primitive colonial public *' grammar 
schools " and academies, by endowment and by tuition 
fees, though sometimes aided by public appropriations. 
Their chief purpose was to fit young men for the profes- 
sions of law, medicine, and the ministry. Little or no 
provision was made for the higher education of women. 
But within the last half of this century, the enormous ex- 
pansion of industrial, mechanical, and commercial pur- 
suits, has created the imperative need of a modified type 
of the higher education adapted to the new environment. 
This demand has been intensified by the powerful upward 
pressure of the public high schools, by the demands of 
women for equal education, and by the more general dif- 
fusion of science among men. 

Endowed State Universities. — The germ of free state 
universities is found in the land act of July 23, supple- 
mentary to the ordinance of 1787, which reserved for 
each new state to be formed out of the Northwest Terri- 
tory, two entire townships of public lands (46,080 acres) 
for the purpose of aiding the establishment by each state 



SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION gj 

of a *' seminary of learning," or, in other words, a state 
college, or university. This original act of 1787 set the 
precedent for a series of subsequent acts and land grants 
by the Federal government in aid of state colleges and 
universities. 

Under the land act of 1787 and its successors in direct 
line up to 1889, the Federal land grants specifically for 
" seminaries of learning," that is, state universities, 
amounted to 20,000 square miles, estimated to have real- 
ized five millions of dollars. 

Many of the states, following the example of the gen- 
eral government, have endowed their universities by grants 
of state lands. But endowments furnish only an incidental 
part of university revenue. Like other public schools, 
the state universities are supported mainly by direct state 
taxation. 

These universities are flourishing with great vigor. 
They represent the best thought of the American people. 
They have strengthened and stimulated the high schools, 
normal schools, and common schools. They are organized 
in general with elective courses of study which include 
science as well as literature and metaphysics. Most of 
them, like the common school and the high school, are 
open to young men and women on equal conditions. 
They have pedagogical departments for the training of 
teachers. They are closely connected with the human 
life of to-day. They fit some students for the professions, 
and others for the highly differentiated industrial, com- 
mercial, mechanical, and business pursuits of a complex 
civilization. More than any other agency they have 
brought the higher education home to the common inter- 
ests of mankind. They have opened to talented and 
ambitious students, gifted by nature but born to poverty, 

AM. PUB. SCH. — 6 



82 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

the doors of the higher education which before had been 
barred by tuition fees. 

The state universities in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Michi- 
gan, Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri, the 
Dakotas, and Nebraska, represent the culmination of 
a strong common school system in the North Central 
division of states. In 1897 Michigan University had 
2878 students, including professional departments; Min- 
nesota, 2647 ; Illinois, 2356; and Wisconsin, 1650. 

The University of Texas, representing the southwest, is 
the crown of a public-school system richly endowed by 
the reservation of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections 
of each township in the vast domain of that state. 

On the Pacific coast the State University of California, 
founded in 1868, is a natural sequence of the ordinance of 
1787 and the land-grant act of 1862. Its doors are open, 
without tuition fees, to 1700 young men and women 
within the university proper, and to 3000 students, in- 
cluding its affiliated colleges of law and medicine. It has 
a strong pedagogical department. It has numerous elec- 
tive courses in language, literature, science, philosophy, 
history, the mechanic arts, agriculture, horticulture, and 
viticulture. It is liberally supported, in the main, by 
direct state taxation, though it has an endowment fund 
derived from state and Federal land grants, and has re- 
ceived several large bequests from educational philan- 
thropists. It is an integral part of the public-school sys- 
tem of California, intrenched in the state constitution, 
and held in trust by a board of regents appointed by the 
governor of the state. 

California is fortunate in having another free university 
which, though not under direct state control, has all the 
other characteristics of a modern state university. Stan- 



SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 83 

ford University, founded and endowed by Mr. and Mrs. 
Leland Stanford (1890), is open to both men and women; 
it has the elective system in studies ; it has a department 
of pedagogics; it has no tuition fees. Opened in 1891, 
it has now more than a thousand students. 

The state universities of Washington and Oregon are 
yet in their infancy, but are rapidly growing. In the 
other states of the western mountain division — Colorado, 
Montana, Wj^oming, Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and the terri- 
tory of Arizona — the public-school system is well estab- 
lished, and state universities and colleges of agriculture 
and the mechanic arts are taking root. 

In the older states along the rim of the Atlantic, non- 
public, quasi-public, and denominational colleges and uni- 
versities, grown powerful by age and by great endow- 
ments, still chiefly hold the field of higher education. 
But the tuition fees of most of these institutions are not 
high. Moreover, many of them, broadened, liberalized, 
and modernized, exercise most of the functions of state 
universities. To this class belong Cornell, Harvard, Yale, 
Columbia, Johns Hopkins, and the universities of Penn- 
sylvania, Virginia, and North Carolina. Cornell, indeed, 
is to all intents and purposes a state university, be- 
cause it has a college of agriculture and the mechanic 
arts richly endowed by the land grant of the act of Con- 
gress (1862), and because it annually receives a fixed num- 
ber of students free from tuition rates. Harvard Univer- 
sity received in its infancy liberal appropriations from the 
commonwealth of Massachusetts, as did Yale from Con- 
necticut, Columbia from New York, and the universities 
of Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia 
from their several states. 

University Departments of Pedagogy. — The normal 



84 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

idea began to appear in the State University of Iowa in 
1855 in the form of elementary instruction, and in the 
State University of Missouri in 1856, in which institution 
it took shape as a normal college department in 1867. 
The early state-university pedagogical departments were 
established in order of time as f ollow\s : Iowa (1873); 
Michigan (1879); Wisconsin (1881); North Carolina 
(1884); Indiana (1886). 

Within the decade of 1887-97 pedagogical departments 
have been opened in the state universities of California, 
Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minne- 
sota, Mississippi, South Dakota, South Carolina,Tennessee, 
Utah, West Virginia, and Washington. In several other 
state universities there are classes of normal students, 
but no organized pedagogical departments. Pedagogical 
departments have also been opened in numerous colleges 
and universities not under state control, such as Cornell, 
Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, Clark, Brown, Columbia, and 
New York city. 

It seems a fitting close to this chapter to quote a 
thought from the president of the oldest university in the 
land, who has been the pioneer in leading the way up to 
the modern idea of elective courses of study in all institu- 
tions of learning, whether public or non-public. Charles 
W. Eliot says : ^ 

*' As a force in the world, universal education does not go behind 
this century in any land. It does not go back more than twenty years 
in such a civilized country as France. It dates from 1871 in England. 
Plato maintained that the producing or industrial classes needed no 
education ; and it is hardly more than a hundred years since this Pla- 
tonic doctrine began to be seriously questioned by social philosophers. 
It is not true yet that education is universal even in our own land ; and 

1 " Educational Reform " (1898). 



^ 



SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 85 

in all lands educational practice lags far behind educational theory. 
In this process of educational construction, so new, so strange, so hope- 
ful, I believe that the chief principles and objects are the same from 
the kindergarten through the university ; and therefore, I maintain that 
school teachers ought to understand and sympathize with university 
reform and progress and that college and university teachers ought to 
comprehend and aid school reform and progress." 



COLLEGES OF AGRICULTURE AND THE MECHANIC ARTS. 

Industrial Education. — The demands of modern in- 
dustrial pursuits first found expression in trade schools 
endowed by educational philanthropists, in manual train- 
ing schools, and in polytechnic schools of various kinds. 
The constitution of Michigan (1850) contained a provision 
that the legislature should provide for the establishment 
of an agricultural school. Accordingly, the first state agri- 
cultural school was opened in 1857, at Lansing, the state 
capital. In 1850 the legislature of Michigan petitioned 
Congress for an endowment of 350,000 acres of land for 
the agricultural school provided for in the state constitu- 
tion of that year, but the request was denied. It soon 
became evident that it would be a wise policy for the 
Federal government, following the lead of the ordinance 
of 1787, to extend indirect aid to a higher grade of tech- 
nical institutions of learning, in which special instruction 
should be given in subjects relating to agriculture and the 
mechanic arts. Congressman Justin S. Morrill, of Ver- 
mont, introduced a bill into the House (1857) authorizing 
the establishment of industrial colleges, and granting to 
each state 20,000 acres of public land for each member of 
Congress. In 1858, the committee on public lands made 
an adverse report. At the following session the bill passed 
both houses, but was vetoed by President Buchanan. 



86 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PC/BL/C SCHOOLS 

In 1861 Mr. Morrill introduced an amended bill which 
was reported on adversely by the committee on public 
lands, but was passed in 1862, and was signed by Presi- 
dent Lincoln. This bill persistently followed up for five 
years, in the face of the most determined opposition, en- 
titles Senator Morrill to high rank as an educational states- 
man. This act reads, in part, as follows : 

" Each state now existing and each new state admitted into the 
Union shall be entitled to as many times 30,000 acres of public land 
(not mineral bearing) as it had in i860, or has, at the time of its admis- 
sion, representatives in both houses of Congress. ... The interest of 
the entire remaining gross proceeds of the grant shall be used for the 
endowment, support, and maintenance of at least one college where 
the leading object shall be, without excluding other scientific and clas- 
sical studies, and including military tactics, to teach such branches of 
learning as are related to agriculture and the mechanic arts, in such 
manner as the legislatures of the states may respectively prescribe, in 
order to promote the liberal and practical education of the industrial 
classes in the several pursuits and professions of life." 

Land-Grant Colleges. — Under this act New York re- 
ceived 990,000 acres; Pennsylvania, 780,000; Ohio, 630,- 
000; Illinois, 480,000; Indiana, 390,000; Massachusetts, 
360,000 ; Kentucky and Missouri, 330,000 each ; Virginia 
and Tennessee, 300,000 each, and other states in propor- 
tion to their number of Senators and Representatives in 
Congress. This act of 1862, with its successors up to 1889, 
yielded a total of 10,500,000 acres, estimated to be worth 
$10,500,000. Some of this land was thrown upon the 
market by some states and sold for fifty or sixty cents an 
acre. Most of the land-scrip issued to the state of New 
York (990,000 acres) was bought by Ezra Cornell for sixty 
cents an acre, on condition that whatever amount exceed- 
ing this price was derived from the sale of these lands after 
their location, should constitute a fund for the support of 



SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 8/ 

the agricultural college of Cornell University. These 
land warrants were located with great business foresight 
on the pine timber lands of Wisconsin, held for some 
years, and sold at an average price of $6.73 an acre. 

These colleges were further aided by act of Congress, March 2, 
1887, which provided that " there shall be established under the direc- 
tion of the college or colleges, or agricultural departments of colleges, 
created by the law of 1862, in each state, a department to be known 
as an agricultural experiment station," and provided for an annual 
subsidy of $1 5,000 to each state. By the act of Aug. 30, 1890, to more 
completely endow the colleges established under the law of 1862, it 
•was provided that the annual appropriation of $15,000 should be sub- 
ject to an annual increase of $1,000 until a maximum appropriation of 
$25,000 annually should be reached. Provision was also made for a 
division of this subsidy between one school for white and one for 
colored students. The act of 1890 specifies that the appropriation 
shall " be applied only to instruction in agriculture, the mechanic arts, 
the English language, and the various branches of mathematical, phy- 
sical, natural, and economic science, with special reference to their 
applications in the industries of life, and to the facilities for such in- 
struction." 

These '' land-grant " colleges were regarded, at first, 
with little favor by the older classical institutions. Small 
and feeble in the beginning, most of them have passed 
through the stage of experiment. Standards of admission 
are gradually made higher, and the number of students is 
rapidly increasing year by year. They are steadily grow- 
ing in public favor, and are sending out skilled experts in 
agricultural, horticultural, viticultural, mechanical, and 
other technical pursuits. In a few states, they have been 
united with other endowed institutions, as in New York 
with Cornell University; in Indiana with Purdue Uni- 
versity ; in New Jersey with the Rutgers Scientific School ; 
in Vermont with the University of Vermont ; in Dela- 
ware with Delaware College. They are united with 



88 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

state universities in California, Georgia, Illinois, Louisi- 
ana, Minnesota, Missouri, Maine, Nebraska, North Caro- 
lina, Nevada, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin, 
Wyoming, and Arizona. Altogether there are sixty-six 
of these institutions, established under the Morrill acts of 
1862 and 1890, sixteen of which are college departments 
of universities, and the remainder are separate institutions. 
The sixteen colleges which are departments of state 
universities practically maintain a standard of admission 
equal to that of other department colleges in the uni- 
versity ; that is, the completion of a high-school course for 
admission to the freshman class. The larger class of 
separate colleges, especially in the newer states, must re- 
ceive its students from the eighth or ninth grade of the 
public schools. In other words, the standard for the time 
being is determined by conditions. This flexibility is in 
accord with the wisdom with which the common-school 
system has been adapted to meet successive stages of the 
political, social, and industrial advancement of the people. 
These colleges are winning their way in the face of criti- 
cism, opposition, and ridicule as did the common school, 
the high school, and the normal school in the days of 
their beginnings. Altogether they have an annual rev- 
enue of $6,000,000, and give instruction to about 30,000 
students. 

At the meeting of the Association of American Agricultural Col- 
leges and Experiment Stations,i Nov. 10, 1896, the Chairman, Presi- 
dent J. E. Stubbs, President of the State University of Nevada, made 
an interesting summary of admission conditions, and courses of in- 
struction offered in these colleges, from which the following brief 
statements are drawn : " Out of 46 colleges reporting, 16 have no sub- 
freshman class and 30 have preparatory departments. The institu- 

1 See Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1896-97, Vol, i. 



SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 89 

tions which have no preparatory departments are chiefly in the wealthy 
and populous states where there are first-class high schools in all cities 
and towns. In the newer and less populous states a well-equipped 
preparatory school of high-school grade, with courses of studies cov- 
ering a period of three or four years, is a necessity, and will continue 
a necessity for many years to come." As to four-years' courses of 
study in these colleges, the statement is made that California, Purdue, 
Kentucky, Minnesota, Cornell, Virginia, and Wyoming, offer 7 ; Del- 
aware, Idaho, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, 6 ; 13 give from 4 to 5 ; and 
14 give one and two courses with numerous electives. 

Federal Aid for Higher Education. — In the report of 
the Commissioner of Education (1896-97), there is found 
a report (Chapter XXIII), giving, in a condensed form the 
amount of Federal and state aid for the establishment of 
'^her education. The total amount given by the United 
States for state universities, act of July 23, 1787, and its 
successors in direct line up to 1889, is 20,000 square miles 
of public land, realizing five millions of dollars ; for State 
Colleges of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, act of 
July 2, 1862, and its successors, up to 1889, 15,000 square 
miles, realizing ten and a half millions of dollars ; lands 
granted by act admitting seven new states since 1889, 
3,260 square miles, realizing $20,864,000. The annual 
appropriations of money from the United States treasury 
towards the support of agricultural colleges and experi- 
ment stations, by acts of 1887 and 1890, capitalized at 
four per cent., would represent an endowment fund of 
$44,400,000. 

The increasing power of state universities, agricultural 
and mechanical colleges and similar public institutions 
under municipal control, is made evident by the latest 
educational statistics. 

The total enrollment of graduate and undergraduate students re- 
ported by public institutions for higher education was 27,654, an in- 



90 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



crease of 1,358 over the previous year.. The total number of students 
reported in the collegiate, graduate, and professional departments of 
institutions for higher education, public and private, and in professional 
schools, of all kinds, was 140,133, of which number 42,999 were en- 
rolled as professional students pursuing studies in law, medicine, and 
theolog)', leaving 97,134 students reported as pursuing what are gen- 
erally known as liberal studies. Of this latter number, 27,654 students 
belong to public institutions, and 69,480 in private, parochial, and 
other non-public institutions. 

Higher Education. — In a paper read before the American Social 
Science Association, December, 1898,^ William T. Harris made the 
following statements relative to the higher education : 

" In 1872 the records of higher education show for the entire nation 
an enrollment of 590 students in each million of inhabitants, — a little 
more than one college student, on an average, for each community of 
two thousand population. Not only did the growth of schools for 
higher education keep up with the growth in population, but the en- 
rollment increased, year by year, until in 1895, instead of 590 students 
we had 11 90 in each million. The quota had doubled, and it has since 
increased. . . . The number of students reported as engaged in post- 
graduate work in all our colleges and universities in 1872 was only 189. 
This has steadily increased, doubling once in five or six years until in 
1897 the number was 4419. They are twenty-five times as numerous. 
Professional students, too, have increased. The number studying law, 
medicine, and theology in 1872 was only 280 in each million of inhab- 
itants. In 1896 the 280 had become 740 in the million. In the same 
quarter of the century, scientific and technical schools have multiplied. 
In the six years from 1890 to 1896 the number of students in engi- 
neering and applied science increased from 15,000 to 24,000." 

NATIONAL SCHOOLS. 

With the exception of a few Indian schools on various 
Indian reservations and in Alaska, there are only two 
great national schools established by act of Congress and 
supported entirely by direct appropriations of national 

1 Journal of American Social Science Association, 1898. 



SECONDARY AND HIGHER PUBLIC EDUCATION 



91 



revenue. These are the United States Mihtary Academy 
at West Point (1802), and the United States Naval 
Academy at Annapolis (1845). They are not usually 
considered as public schools, but they form in reality an 
important part of the American system of public educa- 
tion. They were established for training men in the art 
of war, and for purposes of national defense. Their an- 
nual cost is over $800,000. Their value has been proved 
in every war since their establishment, but was never 
more clearly demonstrated than in the recent war with 
Spain. The skilled naval officers who destroyed the 
Spanish navy at Manila and off Santiago were educated 
in the Naval Academy. All these great sea-captains write 
in praise of the skill and valor of the engineers, gunners, 
firemen, and seamen who were trained in technical schools, 
and common schools. West Point supplied, in part, the 
trained army officers. The rank and file who stormed the 
Spanish intrenchments at El Caney and San Juan had 
been trained, some in common schools, some in high 
schools, some in college and university, but whether 
regulars or volunteers, ex-federals or ex-confederates, cow- 
boys, or college graduates, they proved themselves equals 
in patriotism and valor. 

A NATIONAL UNIVERSITY. 

There remains one more stage of development to com- 
plete the American public-school system, — the estab- 
lishment of a free national university in the national cap- 
ital, which shall utilize the great museums and libraries 
and government scientific departments at Washington, 
and represent the culmination of the free state universi- 
ties in one national institution of learning such as George 



92 



HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



Washington hoped for when he bequeathed in his will 
half of his estate towards that noble end. In 1796, Pres- 
ident Washington, in his message to Congress, urged the 
establishment of a national university as well as a military 
academy. His reasons for desiring a national university 
are set forth as follows : 

" True it is that our country contains many seminaries of learning 
highly respectable and useful ; but the funds upon which they rest are 
too narrow to command the ablest professors in the different depart- 
ments of liberal knowledge for the institution contemplated, though 
they would be excellent auxiliaries. Among the motives to such an 
institution the assimilation of principles, opinions, and manners of our 
countrymen by the common education of a portion of our youth from 
every quarter well deserves attention ; the more homogeneous our 
citizens can be made in these particulars, the greater will be our pros- 
pects of permanent union ; and a primary object of such a national 
institution should be the education of our youth in the science of 
government." 

At various intervals during an entire century, Washington's recom- 
mendation has been a subject of discussion, but not of legislation. In 
1899, President David Starr Jordan says of it : " In matters of educa- 
tion, no other agency can take the place of the combined effort of the 
people. To the end that a great university, worthy of a growing na- 
tion, should be established at the national capital, Washington left a 
large part of his property in trust to Congress to form the nucleus of 
such an establishment. The scholars and investigators now main- 
tained at Washington exert an influence far beyond that of their ofifi- 
cial position. To the force of high training and academic self-devotion 
is to be traced the immense influence exerted in Washington by Joseph 
Henry, Spencer F. Baird, and Brown Goode. Of such men as these 
are universities made. When such men are systematically selected 
from our body of university professors and brought to Washington 
and allowed to surround themselves with like men of the next genera- 
tion, we shall, indeed, have a national capital. A university is simply 
a contrivance for making wisdom effective by surrounding wise men 
with the conditions most favorable for rendering wisdom contagious." 



CHAPTER IV 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 

THE SOUTHERN STATES 

Reconstruction. — When the Civil War was over and 
reconstruction completed, the people of the Southern 
states took up the common-school question with all the 
zeal of the early educational reformers in the North dur- 
ing the days of Horace Mann and Henry Barnard. "The 
South," says Dr. A. D. Mayo, " that so long remained 
outside the expanding circle of the common school, has 
responded to the cry of the children during the last 
twenty years by the most remarkable achievement in the 
organization and support of popular education recorded 
in history." 

During the reconstruction period (1866-76) all the 
Southern states made provisions in their new constitu- 
tions for establishing a system of free public schools. 
The situation was complicated, because separate schools 
were required for the children of the colored race. More- 
over, civil government was unsettled, and the people, 
exhausted by the Civil War, were poor. The pioneer 
educators in the new states of the Northwest or of the 
Pacific states can realize from their own experience, in 
some measure, the untiring efforts and devotion to duty 
necessary to provide for a general system of education, — 
a work which required the combined energies of edu- 
cators, philanthropists, and statesmen. 

93 



94 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

The preliminary steps were taken when General John 
Eaton, afterwards U. S. Commissioner of Education, was 
ordered by General Grant to look after the freedmen in 
Tennessee and Arkansas, and to open schools for colored 
children wherever it was possible to do so. In 1864 a 
considerable number of schools was opened in and around 
Vicksburg and Memphis, so that in 1865 the reports 
showed a school attendance of 7000 pupils. 

The Freedman's Bureau. — The Freedman's Bureau, 
attached to the War Department, was organized in 1865, 
and a part of its work was educational. General O. O. 
Howard, the Commissioner, entered vigorously on his 
duties. In 1867 he reported to the Secretary of War 
that $115,000 had been expended for schools. His later 
official reports show that, from 1866 to 1870, about 
$2,600,000 was expended for school purposes. 

Dr. J. M. L. Curry states that the American Missionary 
Association was the chief body, apart from the govern- 
ment, in the great enterprise of meeting the needs of the 
colored race. Its expenditures from i860 to 1893 in the 
South for freedmen, including church extension as well 
as education, amounted to $11,600,000. 

The Peabody Fund. — George Peabody, educated in a 
Massachusetts common school, placed in the hands of a 
board of trustees of which Robert C. Winthrop was presi- 
dent (1867), a fund of $2,000,000 to be used " for the 
promotion and encouragement of intellectual, moral, or 
industrial education among the young of the more des- 
titute portions of the Southern states of our Union." 

Dr. Barnas Sears, the general agent of the trustees, 
wisely presented the plan of confining aid to public 
schools, allowing them partial support, but requiring the 
people to tax themselves for the remainder necessary to 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 



95 



maintain the schools. He said : '* The object of the 
Peabody Education Fund is free schools for the whole 
people, neither more nor less. We have nothing in view 
but what is comprised therein." 

Robert C. Winthrop, president of the trustees, said in his address 
at the Yorktown Centennial celebration : " There must be aids and 
appropriations, and endowments by cities and states, and by the nation 
at large through its public lands if in no other way, and to an amount 
compared with which the gift of George Peabody — munificent as it was 
for an individual benefaction — is but the small dust of the balance. 
. . . The whole field of our Union is now open to education, and the 
whole field of the Union must be occupied. This government must 
stand or fall with free schools. These and these alone can supply the 
firm foundation, and that foundation must, at this very moment, be ex- 
tended and strengthened and rendered immovable and indestructible." 

The Slater Fund. — John F. Slater, educated in a 
Rhode Island common school and academy, made a be- 
quest of $1,000,000 (1882), and placed it in the hands of 
a board of trustees, of which Rutherford B. Hayes was 
president. The income from this fund was to be ex- 
pended in aiding education in the Southern states. In 
his letter to the trustees Mr. Slater expresses his pur- 
pose as follows : " The general object which I desire to 
have exclusively pursued, is the uplifting of the lately 
emancipated population of the Southern states, and their 
posterity, by conferring on them the blessings of Chris- 
tian education. . . . But it is not only for their own sake, 
but also for the safety of our common country in which 
they have been invested with equal political rights, that 
I am desirous to aid them with the means of such educa- 
tion as shall tend to make them good men and good 
citizens. . . . The means to be used in the prosecution of 
the general object above described I leave to the discre- 
tion of the corporation, only indicating as lines of opera- 



96 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

tion adapted to the present condition of things, the train- 
ing of teachers from among the people required to be 
taught." The trustees decided that students should be 
trained in some manual occupation simultaneously with 
their mental and moral instruction, and confined their 
aid exclusively to such institutions '* as were, with good 
reason, believed to be on a permanent basis." The trus- 
tees paid out for educational aid from 1884 to 1894 the 
sum of $439,000. 

Dr. J. L. M. Curry, secretary of the John F. Slater Fund, in an ex- 
haustive paper on the " Education of the Negroes since i860," ^ makes 
the following statements in relation to education in the South : " All 
the states of the South, as soon as they recovered their governments, 
put in operation systems of public schools which gave equal opportuni- 
ties and privileges to both races. It would be singularly unjust not to 
consider the difficulties — social, political, and pecuniary — which em- 
barrassed the South in the efforts to inaugurate free education. It 
required unusual heroism to adapt to the new conditions, but she was 
equal in fidelity and energy to what was demanded for the reconstruc- 
tion of society and civil institutions. The complete enfranchisement 
of the negroes and their new political relations, as the result of the war 
and the new amendments to the Constitution, necessitated an entire 
reorganization of the systems of public education. Comparisons with 
densely populated sections are misleading, for in the South the sparse- 
ness and poverty of the population are almost a preventive of good 
schools. Still the results have been marvelous. . . . The urban pop- 
ulation is small and agriculture is the chief occupation. Of the 858,- 
000 negroes in Georgia, 130,000 are in cities and towns and 728,000 in 
the country ; in Mississippi, urban colored population 42,000, rural 700,- 
000 ; in South Carolina, urban 66,000 ; against 498,000 rural ; in Ala- 
bama, 65,000 against 613,000; in Louisiana, 93,000 against 466,000. 
While the colored population supplies less than its due proportion of 
pupils to the public schools, and the regularity of attendance is less 
than with the white, yet the difference in length of school terms in 
schools for white and schools for black children is trifling. In the 

1 Report of the Commissioner of Education, Vol. 2, 1894-95. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL IVAR 



97 



same grades the wages of teachers are about the same. The annual 
State school revenue is apportioned impartially among white and black 
children, so much per capita to each child." 

In 1893-94, the common-school enrollment of colored 
pupils in the sixteen former slave states and the District 
of Columbia was 1,425,000 as against an enrollment of 
white pupils of 3,835,000. " In 1880, on my first visit to 
the South, "says Dr. Mayo, *' I found these public schools 
everywhere acknowledged models and centers of hght. 
Their boards of education were composed of the leading 
men of the community, who gave character to the move- 
ment and from the first assured its success. It would be 
impossible to make a Northern public fully understand the 
enthusiasm I witnessed in scores of villages and cities, ex- 
tending the 'whole region roundabout,' awakened by the 
strange and beautiful spectacle of all the children going 
to school together, instructed, disciplined, and interested 
in a way that had never been known before in the 
memory of the oldest inhabitant." 

School Organization. — The following exact statement 
is quoted from an exhaustive paper on ** The Social Unit 
in the Public School System of the United States," by 
Mr. Wellford Addis, Specialist in the Bureau of Edu- 
cation : ^ 

" It seems legitimate to conclude that the school systems of the 
southeastern and southern coast are systems of state schools, while in 
Massachusetts, to take the most striking example, the school system 
is a town (ship) system, though most freely directed by the legislature 
to carry out reforms or inaugurate innovations. Five Southern states 
have a county board as the real local school authority. In one of 
these (Florida) the county is divided into three districts, and a member 
of the board is elected from each ; in another (Georgia) the grand jury 
choose the county board ; in another (Mississippi) the county board is 

' See Report of the Commissioner of Education, Vol. 2, 1894-95. 

AM. PUB. SCH. — 7 



98 



HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



composed of a member from each supervisor's district appointed by 
the states uperintendent, and in the fourth and fifth the county board . 
is appointed by the governor. The other states of our southern coast 
have a county superintendent as the local school authority, who is 
appointed in Alabama and Virginia by the state superintendent, and 
in South Carolina (under the old law) by the people. 

" North Carolina has no county superintendent, and its schools are 
under authority of its ' county commissioners ' sitting as a ' county 
board of education.' The more local or district authority, as far as it 
occurs, is appointed by the county authority, except in Mississippi, where 
the ' patrons' elect three district trustees, and in Virginia, where an 
electoral board, composed of the county judge, commonwealth attor- 
ney, and county superintendent, elect the district boards for the school 
subdivisions of the county." 

Recent Statistics. — The report of the Commissioner of 
Education (1896-97), shows that the total school enroll- 
ment in the sixteen Southern states and the District of 
Columbia was 5,398,000, the number of colored pupils 
being 1,460,000, and the number of white pupils 3,938,000. 
In Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina the colored 
school population exceeds the white school population. 
The total expenditure for the public schools of this sec- 
tion was $31,145,000. The estimated cost of colored 
schools alone is $6,575,000. Since 1870 the total amount 
of money expended in the Southern states has reached 
$514,922,000, of which it is estimated that $100,000,000 
has been expended on schools for colored children. 

Secondary and Higher Education. — The Report of 
1896-97 shows that in the 169 schools of all kinds, public 
and private, in the United States, exclusively for the edu- 
cation of the colored race, there was an enrollment of 
45,402 students. Of these schools all but nine were in the 
Southern states. In the secondary grades there were 
15,203 students, and in collegiate grades 2108 students. 
Separate state institutions belonging to the class of 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVH WAR gg 

" land-grant " colleges, receiving their share of the Con- 
gressional subsidy for such colleges, have been established 
for colored students in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, 
Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, 
Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, 
and West Virginia. One of the most notable of these 
schools is the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute 
in Virginia (1870). Dr. Mayo tells the story of this school 
as follows : 

" The one great educational genius developed by the Civil War was 
General S. C. Armstrong. Born in Hav^^aii, educated in Massachusetts, 
a brave soldier and a worker with the colored people during the war, 
he established at Hampton, close by the beach where the first slave 
ship landed, the most original and characteristically American and mis- 
sionary organization for the uplifting of the humbler classes, still the 
majority of mankind, now in existence. The Hampton system com- 
bines all that can be done for the lower orders of mankind in one 
institution. It organizes worship on unsectarian basis, establishes 
military discipline and training in a soldier's life for the boys, compels 
every pupil to learn some method for self-support, introduces the girls 
to new modern ways of home life, organizes the principal industrial 
occupations, gives instruction in English in a good graded system, 
with a great normal school at the center for teachers, and through its 
summer schools reaches outward. On the one hand, it joins hands 
with the state of Virginia, and on the other, with the nation, in the 
training of the negro and the Indian, and with no complications ap- 
peals to the American people for support. Armstrong wore himself 
out in a ministry of education, died in middle life, and, like the good 
soldier he was, asked for a soldier's funeral." 

The Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, Ala- 
bama, receives from the state a small appropriation, and is 
further aided by contributions from philanthropists. The 
story of this school is an object lesson in education, and 
I let the founder and president of the institution give it 
in his own words. In an address on the ** Industrial Edu- 



lOO HIsrOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

cation of the Blacks" ^ (1896), Booker T. Washington 
spoke, in part, as follows : 

" I was born a slave on a plantation in Virginia in 1857 or 1858, I 
think. . . . With the long prayed freedom in actual possession, my 
mother decided to locate in West Virginia. Soon after, I began work 
in the coal mines for the support of my mother. While doing this I 
heard in some way of General Armstrong's school at Hampton, Va. 
I heard at the same time that it was a school where a poor boy could 
work for his education so far as his board was concerned. I began at 
once to save every nickel I could get hold of. At length, with my 
own savings and a little help from my brother and mother, I started 
for Hampton. ... I at once found General Armstrong and told him 
what I had come for, and what my condition was. In his great hearty 
way he said that if I was worth anything he would give me a chance 
to work my way through the institution. . . . While at Hampton I 
resolved, if God permitted me to finish the course of study, I would 
enter the far South, the black belt of the Gulf States, and give my 
life in providing as best I could the same kind of chance for self-help 
for the youth of my race that I found ready for me when I went to 
Hampton, and so in 1881 I left Hampton and went to Tuskegee and 
started the Normal and Industrial Institute in a small church and a 
shanty, with one teacher and 30 students. Since then the institution 
of Tuskegee has grown till we have connected with it 69 instructors 
and 800 young men and women representing 19 states. . . . From the 
first, industrial or hand training has been made a special feature of our 
work. While friends at the North and elsewhere have given us money 
to pay our teachers and to buy material which we could not produce, 
still, very largely by the labor of our students, we have built up within 
about fourteen years a property that is now valued at $225,000; 37 
buildings, counting large and small, located on 1,400 acres of land, all 
except three of which are the product of student labor." 

Taxation for Public Schools. — The burden of school 
taxation in the Southern states has been heavy and it 
must long remain so. The people fully realize that while 

^ Address at the dinner in honor of Alexander Hamilton, Brooklyn, 
N. Y., 1896. Report of Commissioner of Education, Vol. 2, 1894-95. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR loi 

endowments, bequests, and denominational appropriations 
may aid them, to some extent, in educating some of the 
children, the main support of the public schools for the 
great mass of children must be derived from a regular and 
unintermittent revenue derived from state and local tax- 
ation. Heavy as the burden is, it is no greater, relatively, 
than it was in New England during the period when the 
common schools first gained a foothold in the world. The 
graded schools of cities and large towns in the South now 
differ but little from the urban schools in other parts of 
the United States ; the rural schools, as in all other 
sparsely populated states, will be subject, as in other 
states, to slow development. 

THE PACIFIC STATES. 

For a brief typical study of this section, we may take 
California, which was acquired by conquest in the Mexican 
War and was ceded by Mexico to the United States in 

1848. Owing to the discovery of gold this region was 
rapidly filled up by emigrants from every state in our own 
country and from most of the nations of the old world. 
California was admitted as a state (1850) without the 
usual preliminary stage of a territorial government. The 
state constitution, framed and adopted by the people in 

1849, pi'ovided for the election of a state superintendent 
of public instruction by the people for a term of three 
years ; made it the duty of the legislature to " provide 
for a system of common schools by which a school should 
be kept up in each school district at least three months in 
every year ; and provided that the proceeds of school lands 
should constitute a perpetual fund to be inviolably appro- 
priated to the support of common schools, and to protect 
any land grants for a state university." 



102 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

State Legislation. — At the first session of the legisla- 
ture (1849-50) no school law was enacted, the Commit- 
tee on Education reporting '* that the taxes laid on the 
people, for state, county, and municipal purposes were 
so heavy, the committee did not deem it advisable to 
report a bill to tax the people still further for the support 
of public schools." At the second session of the state 
legislature (1850-51) a school law was enacted, providing 
for the subdivision of counties into school districts ; for a 
district school committee of three, elected annually by 
direct vote of the people ; gave the school committees 
power to build schoolhouses, to examine and appoint 
teachers, and to report to the state superintendent. 
David C. Broderick, afterward U. S. senator from Cali- 
fornia, educated when a boy in the public schools of New 
York city, was an active supporter of this bill. In 1852, 
the imperfect act of the preceding year was amended by 
making county assessors ex of^cio school superintendents ; 
and by authorizing counties to levy a school tax " not to 
exceed three cents on a hundred dollars " — a meager pro- 
vision for a flourishing and already populous state. 

This law also contained a section which enabled the 
parochial schools to secure a pro rata of the public school 
moneys, a provision which led to several bitter contests 
in the state legislature for a period of ten years. 

School Beginnings. — Meanwhile, the people of Ameri- 
can descent set to work and organized schools, after the 
manner of their ancestors on the Atlantic coast in early 
days, without any law other than local ordinances. In the 
town of San Francisco, October -ii, 1847, ^ committee of 
" Town Council " (Ayuntamiento ) built a small one-room 
schoolhouse on the corner of the town plaza (now Ports- 
mouth Square), and on February 23, 1848, a small num- 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 103 

ber of townsmen held a meeting and elected the first 
school committee in California, consisting of seven mem- 
bers. This school committee appointed as teacher, 
Thomas Douglass, a graduate of Yale College. The 
school was opened in April, 1848, with six pupils. This 
was a public school, mainly supported by tuition fees, but 
indigents were admitted as charity pupils, after the 
manner that prevailed in public and parish schools two 
hundred years before in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New 
York. The town council agreed to pay for these charity 
pupils the sum of $400 towards the support of the school. 
But this school was short-lived. When the stampede for 
the gold mines became general the school dwindled down 
to eight pupils, and schoolmaster Douglass joined the 
prospectors and set out for the mountains. In December, 
1849, ^^- ^^^ Mvs. John C. Pelton opened a school sup- 
ported by " voluntary subscriptions," but free to the 
" children of the poor." This school was made a free 
public school by ordinance of the Common Council of 
San Francisco, April 8, 1850, and John C. Pelton was 
appointed as teacher, in which position he continued 
until September 25, 185 1. During this period (1848-51), 
numerous small private schools and denominational 
schools were opened in San Francisco and other parts of 
California where the population had become grouped into 
villages and small towns, such as Sacramento, Stockton, 
San Jose, Santa Clara, Nevada City, Grass Valley, Rough 
and Ready, etc. At this time the total number of chil- 
dren in the state between 4 and 18 years of age was 
estimated to be about 6,000. Outside of San Francisco, 
there were only a few feeble public schools, and the his- 
tory of these is known only by tradition.^ 

iSwett's " History of the Public School System of California." 



I04 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



Further State Legislation. — At the third session of the 
Legislature (1851-52) Frank Soule, chairman of the 
senate committee on education, made an able report in 
favor of common schools and introduced a revised school 
law containing several important provisions in advance. 
This law, as approved May 3, 1852, created a state board 
of education, consisting of the governor, surveyor gen- 
eral, and state superintendent ; defined the duties of 
all school of^cers ; authorized the common council in 
incorporated towns to raise a school tax not to exceed 
three cents on a hundred dollars, and fixed the county 
tax at the same rate ; and provided that no school should 
receive any apportionment of public money unless free 
from all denominational and sectarian bias, control, or 
influence whatever. This last provision was rendered 
necessary from the fact that under the previouslaw (1851- 
52), parochial schools had obtained a pro rata of public 
moneys. 

School Beginnings in San Francisco, 1851-53. — The 
first city school ordinance passed under the state school 
law of 1 85 1, was that of San Francisco, adopted Septem- 
ber, 1851, which provided for a city board of education 
and a city school superintendent, and appropriated 
$35,000 for the support of schools. During the forma- 
tive period of 1851-53, among the small group of school 
principals, James Denman was a graduate of the Albany 
( N. Y. ) State normal school ; Ellis H. Holmes and Ahira 
Holmes were from the Bridgewater ( Mass.) State normal 
school ; and William Russell's Merrimack ( N. H. ) private 
normal school was represented by the writer of this 
history. 

The first schools were held in rented buildings, small, 
rude, and cheap, and roughly fitted up for temporary 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 



105 



school purposes. For instance, the Happy Valley School 
( now the Denman School) occupied for a time a livery 
stable, sub-divided by thin board partitions. The Rincon 
School was held in a shanty half-buried in a sand bank. 
But these rooms were crowded with pupils. In 1851 
there was an enrollment of 400 pupils; in 1852, of 600; 
in 1853, of 1500; and in 1856, of nearly 8,000, including 
1,421 in the ward or parochial schools. The school 
appropriations, at first, were niggardly. The common- 
school spirit had not yet been developed. The new city 
was full of parochial and other denominational schools, 
and of small private schools. It required heroic efforts to 
organize and maintain common schools in the midst of a 
cosmopolitan population drawn from the four quarters of 
the globe. The political elements were unstable, and the 
tenure of teachers was uncertain. The Vigilance Com- 
mittee, in 1856, purified the city, and for a decade the 
school administration was good, and prospects began to 
brighten. 

The parochial schools of the Catholic Church were 
strong, and were attended by more than a thousand chil- 
dren. For several years these schools, known as ward- 
schools, received their pro rata of public-school moneys. 
This question became a vexed one in state legislation. 

The first high school in San Francisco (1856) was 
started under the name of '' The Union Grammar School," 
because some of the city officials held that a high school 
was not legally a common school. At the end of a year, 
however, the school was allowed to assume its proper 
name, "■ The English High School." 

State Legislation Again. — At the fifth session of the 
legislature (1853-54), Hon. D. R. Ashley submitted a 
carefully-prepared school bill, but as it contained a section 



I06 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

that prohibited sectarian schools from receiving a pro rata 
of public school moneys, it was buried in the rubbish of 
unfinished business. During the next session (1854-55), 
Mr. Ashley introduced, in substance, his rejected school 
bill of the preceding year, which became a law May 3, 
1855. This enactment provided among other things that 
no school should be entitled to any share of the public 
fund that had not been taught by teachers duly examined 
and approved by legal authority, and that no sectarian 
doctrines should be taught in any public school under 
penalty of forfeiting public funds. 

In 1857, Andrew J. Moulder, a graduate of the Uni- 
versity of Virginia, was elected to the office of state sup- 
erintendent, which he held until 1863. From his varied ex- 
perience as a teacher in a Virginia academy, and as a 
journalist in California, he brought to the office good 
qualifications for his work. He secured numerous amend- 
ments to the state school law, and his six annual reports 
afford a good record of the advancement in common 
schools. 

In 1 861, John Conness," afterwards U. S. senator from 
California, introduced a bill in the assembly, which be- 
came a law, providing for the sale of the i6th and 36th 
sections of school lands, and also that the proceeds should 
be paid into the state school fund. Thus, after many 
years of impracticable legislation in tinkering on town- 
ship land bills, a practicable law was enacted by which in 
less than one year 200,000 acres were sold, and the pro- 
ceeds applied to the state school fund. 

Another attempt was made to secure a prorata of 
school money for parochial schools ; but it was defeated 
by the determined stand taken against it by Hon. John 
Conness. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 107 

Important school legislation was secured in 1865-66 by 
the enactment of the ** Revised School Law " — a law 
drafted by the Superintendent of Public Instruction and 
passed almost without amendment. This law contained 
liberal provisions for state, county, and district taxation ; 
and marked the beginning of free common schools in 
every rural district in the state. It fixed the rate of state 
school tax at eight cents on each hundred dollars of tax- 
able property ; the county school tax at a minimum of 
$3.00 for each school census child, and the maximum at 
thirty-five cents on each $100; authorized and required 
school trustees to levy a school tax sufficient to keep a 
free school five months in each year. It provided for a 
state board of education ; for life diplomas for teachers ; 
for district school libraries ; for county institutes ; for the 
election of district school trustees for a term of three 
years, one to be elected each year ; and for many other 
details of a modern public school system. 

State Taxation. — In 1874 the state school tax was in- 
creased to an annual levy of $7.00 for each school census 
child, which yielded an annual school revenue of over a 
million of dollars. Another provision secured for each 
school district, even the smallest, a minimum annual ap- 
portionment of $500, thus securing at least an eight months 
school in all rural district schools. 

The original state tax of half a mill on the dollar was 
secured in 1864 by a petition to the state legislature from 
each school district in the state. There were nearly a 
thousand of these petitions, and the legislators were 
forced into an immediate compliance with the demands 
of their constituents. This petition, drafted by the state 
superintendent, and sent out for circulation in every school 
district, read as follows : 



Io8 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

"Whereas, We believe that it is the duty of a representative 
government to maintain pubhc schools as an act of self-preservation, 
and that the property of the state should be taxed to educate the 
children of the state ; and whereas, the present school fund is wholly 
inadequate to sustain a system of free schools ; we, the undersigned, 
qualified electors of the state of California, respectfully ask your 
honorable body to levy a special state tax of half a mill on the dollar, 
during the fiscal years 1864 and 1865, the proceeds of the same to be 
disbursed in the same manner as the present state school fund." 

In 1866, the rate of state school tax was raised to eight 
cents on each $100, and at a later period was more than 
doubled. 

State Normal Schools. — The first state normal school 
was opened in San Francisco, July, 1862, with Ahira 
Holmes, of the Bridgewater Normal School, as principal. 
Henry P. Carlton was soon after appointed vice principal. 
In 1873 the school was removed to San Jose. Since that 
time additional state normal schools have been established 
at Los Angeles, Chico, San Diego, and San Francisco. 

The State University. — In 1868, John W. Dwindle 
drafted a bill and secured its passage in the legislature of 
which he was a member, providing for a state university 
with an agricultural college. The College of California, 
a liberal denominational college, founded in 1855, dis- 
incorporated and conveyed its grounds at Berkeley to 
the State University, which assumed the debts of the 
college. The State University opened its doors in Oak^ 
land, September 23, 1869, with Professor John Le Conte, of 
South Carolina, as acting president. In 1870, Henry 
Durant, of Yale, who had been president of the College 
of California, was elected president of the State Uni- 
versity. The endowment fund of the State University, 
derived from Federal and state land grants, may be roughly 
estimated at tvv^o millions of dollars. A state tax of 10 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR 109 

cents on $100 is annually levied for the support of the 
university, and liberal appropriations have been made 
from time to time for the erection of buildings. Several 
large individual bequests have been made to the uni- 
versity by educational philanthropists. 

State Publication of Text-Books. — The special student 
will discover that most of the states made, at one time or 
another in their history, some blunder or some unfor- 
tunate experiment in school legislation. California made 
an ill-advised experiment by a law providing for the state 
publication of common-school text-books. This law was 
enacted during a period of great social agitation and in- 
dustrial discontent. Various causes led up to this result. 
Under a law enacted in 1863-64, the State Board of 
Education was authorized to adopt a uniform series of 
school-books for rural school districts, which at that time 
included only about one third of the school children in 
the state. Incorporated cities and towns having special 
boards of education were left free to adopt their own 
text-books. This law was enacted on the repeated de- 
mand of the teachers assembled in state institutes. It 
had been found that district school trustees made ill- 
advised selections, or else made no adoptions whatever, 
leaving pupils to use whatever miscellaneous books they 
brought to school. This law worked well enough before 
the days of county boards of education ; but by influences 
other than good public policy, San Francisco and all other 
incorporated cities were soon included in the state uni- 
formity law. The question still remained a vexed sub- 
ject of legislation. Finally, in 1885, a law was enacted 
which provided that the State Board of Education should 
edit or prepare a series of text-books, to be printed by the 
state printer, published by the state, and furnished to 



1 10 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

• 
pupils at the cost price of publication. At the outset, the 

majority of public-school teachers were opposed to this 

plan ; after an experience of fifteen years, the teachers are 

almost unanimous in condemnation of it. 

Educational Evolution. — In a quarter of a century, 
California rapidly passed through all the successive stages 
of educational development, — first, private and denomina- 
tional schools ; next, city schools ; then, ungraded district 
schools, partly supported by rate bills ; then free public 
primary and grammar schools ; and, in due time, high 
schools, normal schools, and a free state university. 
Incidental to this system, there were provided, as in other 
states, reform schools, institutions for the deaf and dumb 
and blind, and for feeble-minded children. In 185 1, the 
public-school enrollment was less than 2000 ; ten years 
later it had increased to 18,000; in 1871, it was 64,000, 
and in 1875, to 130,000. The public school expenditures 
amounted in 1851 to $33,000 ; in 1861, to half a million, 
and in 1875, to $2,500,000. From 1850 to 1875, the 
total expenditure for school purposes, including state 
normal schools and state university, amounted to nearly 
$25,000,000. The expenditure for public-school purposes 
in 1897 was $5,748,000. 

Other Western Mountain States. — The history of the 
school system of the other Pacific and Rocky Mountain 
states, — now classed by the Bureau of Education as the 
" Western Division," — resembles, in general outlines, that 
of California. Oregon had a slower development ; Wash- 
ington and Colorado a quicker growth. The state uni- 
versities of Washington, Oregon, and Colorado are excep- 
tionally promising, and are based on well-organized sys- 
tems of public schools. Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, 
Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, are marching along 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR m 

their mountain highways in the public-school procession. 
Alaska has its system of schools for Indians, in charge of 
the National Bureau of Education, and will soon have its 
common schools for white children, and indue time its 
state university and experiment stations. 

In all this western mountain group of states the total 
public-school enrollment is 700,000, or 200,000 less than 
that of the New England states. Out of the total public 
and private school enrollment, only about six per cent are 
found in private schools. In the universities, colleges, and 
schools of technology, there are 5,300 students, 60 per 
cent of whom are in public institutions. In San Fran- 
cisco, the largest city of this group of states, there were 
enrolled (1896-97) 39,000 pupils in public schools, and 
8,000 in parochial and private schools. 

THE NORTH ATLANTIC STATES. 

New England. — In New England modern advancement 
has consisted chiefly in perfecting the schools all along 
the lines of original development. The district schools 
have given place to town schools placed under the super- 
vision of educational experts ; wise compulsory educational 
laws strictly enforced in all manufacturing cities, secure 
the rights of children to attend school at least a part of 
each year. Notwithstanding the influx of foreign opera- 
tives into cities, ample provision has been made for taking 
the children into well-planned and well-ventilated school 
buildings, where they are assimilated into American cit- 
izens. School attendance has been everywhere increased 
by furnishing text-books at public expense ; and in rural 
districts by free public transportation to the central 
schools. In the city of Boston (1896-97), there were 



112 HJSTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

82,000 children enrolled in the public schools, and 12,000 
attending parochial and private schools. 

In Massachusetts the doors of the high schools are open 
to all girls and boys who are fitted to enter them and de- 
sire to do so, transportation of pupils remote from school 
being paid for at public expense. Here is what William 
T. Harris said in 1894 :^ 

" I find, by the returns made to the National Bureau of Education 
that the total amount of school education that each inhabitant of 
Massachusetts is receiving on an average — basing the calculation on 
the attendance in public and private schools and the length of the 
annual school term — is nearly seven years of two hundred days 
each, while the average schooling given each citizen in the whole 
nation is only four and three-tenths of such years. No other state is 
giving so much education to its people as Massachusetts, and yet all 
the education given in all its institutions does not amount on an 
average to so much as seven eighths of an elementary education of 
eight years. Even Massachusetts is not over-educating the people. 
But there would seem to be some connection between the fact that, 
while her citizens get nearly twice the national average amount of 
education, her wealth-producing power as compared with other states 
stands almost in the same ratio — namely (in 1885), at seventy-three 
cents per day for each man, woman, and child, while the average for 
the whole nation was only forty cents." 

New York and Pennsylvania. — Of all the states, New 
York ranks highest in the number of pupils enrolled on 
public-school registers, having a total enrollment of 1,200,- 
000, and Pennsylvania is a close second with 1,140,000. 
Each state has fourteen large and well-equipped public 
normal schools. Each state has a strong system of high 
schools. Each state has an effective system of common 
schools, differing in details, but each accomplishing the 

1 Editor's Preface to " Evolution of the Massachusetts Public School 
System," by George H. Martin. 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR ixx 

main purpose of educating the people. Both states have 
their pubHc and non-pubhc colleges and universities, of 
which they are justly proud. Including the school en- 
rollment in New Jersey (295,000), and the New England 
states (907,000), the total public school enrollment of the 
Northern Atlantic Division is 3,545,000. According to 
the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1896-97, in 
the city of Philadelphia, there were 168,000 pupils en- 
rolled in public schools, and 42,000 in parochial and private 
schools. 

The school system of New York city has recently been 
reorganized and the executive power has been central- 
ized. In 1896, an act of the state legislature provided 
for a city board of education for New York city, consist- 
ing of 21 commissioners of common schools, appointed by 
the mayor, for a term of three years, one third to be ap- 
pointed annually. The board have full control of public 
schools and of the public-school system of the city, sub- 
ject only to the statutes of the state. Teachers are ap- 
pointed by the board on the written nomination of a major- 
ity of the board of school superintendents. The city 
must be divided into fifteen inspection districts, for each of 
which there is a board of school inspectors of five mem- 
bers, appointed by the mayor for a term of five years, one 
inspector being appointed each year. The local or ward 
boards elected by popular vote are abolished. Under this 
law high schools have been established, and kindergarten 
schools opened. This law is typical of the present ten- 
dency in all great cities to a centralized management of 
schools, under the inspection of educational experts. The 
new charter of San Francisco, adopted in 1899, provides 
for a board of education of four members, appointed by 
the mayor, and each paid a salary of $3,000 a year. 

AM. PUB. SCH. — 8 



114 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



The growth of New York city in recent years has been 
so rapid that it has been difficult for the schools to keep 
pace with the population. At the opening of the schools 
in September, 1898, there were 15,000 children clamoring 
in vain for admission into the over-crowded public schools. 
Under the imperative demands of the public press, tem- 
porary rooms were rented for most of these children, and 
measures proposed for issuing bonds to the amount of 
$9,000,000 for the erection of suitable modern school- 
houses. In 1897 there were estimated to be 40,000 chil- 
dren in this city attending parochial and private schools, 
and 226,000 enrolled in the public schools. Yet there 
is not room enough to accommodate the children clam- 
oring for admission into the public schools. One great 
drawback on the public schools of New York city, for the 
last quarter of a century has been the over-crowded school- 
rooms and the great number of pupils to each teacher. 
This condition of things exists in Chicago and most of 
the other great cities. 

THE NORTH CENTRAL STATES. 

The Northwest Territory. — In this central seat of popu- 
lation, made secure to public schools and free labor by 
the ordinance of 1787, the American public-school system 
has full and free development. Here, in the five states 
formed out of the original Northwest Territory — Ohio, 
Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin — there are now 
enrolled in the public schools 3,2 15,000 pupils, — an enroll- 
ment lacking only 30,000 of being equal to the combined 
enrollment of New York, Pennsylvania, and the New 
England States taken together. Here, also, are enrolled 
in all institutions, public and private, for the higher edu- 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVH WAR 



115 



cation, 17,000 students, of whom one half are in pubHc 
colleges and universities. Here are growing up great 
state universities like those of Michigan and Illinois. 
Here is the University of Chicago, which resembles the 
modern state university in most respects except in name. 
Here, too, are congregated the notable leaders of the 
American-Herbartian methods of instruction, who are 
bringing common-school methods of instruction into ac- 
cord with psychological principles and the needs of mod- 
ern social conditions. 

Other States. — If we add to these five states the other 
states included in the North Central Division — Minnesota, 
Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Kansas, — we 
find a public school enrollment of 5,587,000 pupils, or more 
than one-third of the entire enrollment of the republic. 
These states, with one exception, came into the Union under 
conditions similar to those of the Northwest-Territory 
states. Missouri, which remained so long on the border 
line of North and South, East and West, is distinguished, 
educationally, by the public-school systems of St. Louis 
and Kansas city, and the work of William T. Harris and 
James M. Greenwood. 

Turning to the great cities of this division we find a 
large school attendance in parochial and private schools, 
but in these states, as a whole, such attendance is compara- 
tively small. The public schools of Chicago, like those of 
New York, are overcrowded with children, having an en- 
rollment of 225,000 pupils; yet there are estimated to be 
91,000 children attending parochial and private schools. 
The city of St. Louis has a public school enrollment of 
75,000 and a parochial and private school attendance esti- 
mated at 25,000. 



1 1 6 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

SOUTH ATLANTIC STATES. 

In this division are included the states of Virginia, West 
Virginia, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, North 
and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. The total 
common-school enrollment in these states in 1896-97, was 
2,070,000, Georgia ranking highest in number (446,000), 
Virginia second (368,000), and North Carolina third 
(258,000). The city of Washington (D. C), had a public- 
school enrollment of 42,000, and a parochial and private 
school attendance estimated at 5,000 pupils. In Baltimore 
the public-school enrollment was 76,000 ; the parochial 
and private school attendance was estim.ated at 16,000. 

SOUTH CENTRAL STATES. 

This division includes Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, 
Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. 
The total common school enrollment is 2,725,000, Texas 
ranking highest (616,000), Tennessee second (482,000), 
Kentucky third (400,000). The city of Louisville has a 
public-school enrollment of 26,000, and a parochial and 
private school attendance estimated at 8,000. New 
Orleans has a public-school attendance of 29,000, and no 
report on parochial or private school attendance. Nash- 
ville has in public schools an enrollment of 10,000; in 
parochial and private schools, 1,700. 

CONCLUSION. 

This chapter may be fitly closed by a quotation from 
the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1896-97 : 
" If the conditions existing in the year 1896-97 were con- 
tinued indefinitely, what would be the average amount of 



PUBLIC SCHOOLS AFTER THE CIVIL WAR u; 

schooling per individual, counting it in school years of two 
hundred days each ? I find that if we include public and 
private schools and higher education as well as elementary 
and secondary, the amount that each inhabitant would 
receive is 4.94 years." 

The table which the commissioner submits shows the 
comparative rank by '* divisions " as follows : North 
Atlantic, 6.50 years; North Central, 5.90 years ; Western, 
5.54 years ; South Atlantic, 3.08 years ; South Central, 2.83 
years. Another table shows the total amount of school- 
ing per inhabitant, considering only public elementary and 
secondary schools, to be 4.37 years. The *' divisions " 
rank as follows: North Atlantic 5.61 years; North Central 
5.29 years; Western 5.02 years; South Atlantic 2.78 
years ; South Central 2.49 years. This official exhibit 
does not seem to indicate that the republic, as a whole, 
is suffering from over education of the people. 

The report of the Bureau of Education further shows 
that there were enrolled in the schools and colleges, both 
public and private, during the school year 1896-97, 
16,255,093 pupils, being an increase of 257,896 over the 
preceding year. There were also enrolled 393,194 pupils 
in city evening schools, business schools, Indian schools, 
schools for defective classes, reform schools, orphan asy- 
lums, and miscellaneous schools. This makes the grand 
total of pupils and students in the whole nation 16,648,287. 



CHAPTER V 

COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY. 
BRANCHES OF INSTRUCTION 

In Colonial Schools. — The curriculum of the primitive 
colonial common school included only reading, writing, 
and arithmetic. For half a century the course in reading 
consisted of the hornbook, some church primer or cate- 
chism, the Psalter, and the Bible. In arithmetic the 
teachers used some English text-book, such as Cocker's 
or Hodder's, and dictated lessons to pupils, who carefully 
copied their work into blank-books. When the catechism 
and the Psalter began to go out of use, various kinds of 
readers and spelling-books were brought over from Eng- 
land. Still later, text-books on grammar, geography, and 
history were dimly foreshadowed by fragments of each, 
roughly *' correlated " in various reading books. 

In Early American Schools. — During the first half cen- 
tury after the War of the Revolution, the colonial course 
of study was enriched by the addition of grammar, geo- 
graphy, and, occasionally, history of the United States. 
Studies other than these were exceptional, save in a few 
cities and large towns, in which the original Latin gram- 
mar schools were becoming slowly transformed into 
American public schools which supplied an education in 
English along with instruction in Latin. The text-books 
were few in number and poor in quality. Noah Web- 
ster's ''American Spelling Book" was used as a correlated 

ii8 



COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY 119 

text-book for beginners in reading and spelling, though 
some schools retained Perry's or Dilworth's, both of Eng- 
lish origin. The spelling book was followed by a single 
ungraded reading book, usually Murray's " English 
Reader," or the " American Preceptor," or Scott's " Elo- 
cution," or the " Columbian Orator," or Webster's '' Ameri- 
can Selection," or Porter's " Rhetorical Reader," or the 
" American First Class Book," with the Bible for sup- 
plementary reading. There was, in general, one un- 
graded text-book for each of the other studies ; such 
as Pike's, or DaboU's, or Hodder's, or Welch's, or 
Adams's Arithmetic ; Lindley Murray's or Noah Web- 
ster's English Grammar ; and Dwight's, or Morse's, 
or Olney's, or Woodbridge's Geography. Engraved 
copy-books were unknown. The teacher wrote the 
copies at the head of each page in each pupil's blank- 
book, and made and mended the quill pens. Drawing 
was an unknown art, and little or no time was wasted in 
school singing. Printed courses of study had no exis- 
tence. School desks and seats were rude and uncomfort- 
able. Behind the teacher's platform there was usually 
found a small blackboard, but it \vas never used by pupils. 
Charts, maps, and globes had not yet come into general 
use. The hours of school were from 9 A. M. to 4 P. M., 
with an intermission of one hour at noon. Schools were 
in session six days in the week, though on Saturdays they 
closed at noon in order to give pupils time to prepare for 
Sunday. In summer time, when the big boys were at 
work on the farm, the school was taught by some young 
schoolmistress that had attended the academy a few 
terms. During the winter term of three months a school- 
master was employed, because some of the boys required 
a strong hand in discipline, and the older boys from fifteen 



I20 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

to twenty-one years of age took up book-keeping or pursued 
the advanced course in algebra and geometry found in 
Pike's arithmetic. The schoohnaster was paid from ten to 
fifteen dollars a month, exclusive of board ; and the school- 
mistress from three to eight dollars a month. As late as 
1814, Mary Lyon, the founder of Mt. Holyoke Seminary 
and College taught her first district school in Western 
Massachusetts for $3 a month, and " boarded round." 

DISCIPLINE. 

School discipline was rigid and sometimes severe, like 
that in the schools of England and Scotland. It was 
pithily summed up and kept alive by a well-known couplet 
in the " New England Primer : " 

" The idle fool 

Is whipped at school." 

The schoolmasters who came over from England dur- 
ing the first century of colonial life were firm believers in 
corporal punishment as a stimulus to mental activity in 
memorizing hard lessons. But the severity of English 
discipline slowly disappeared. The ordinary school dis- 
cipline, except in some of the British types of Latin 
grammar schools was reasonably well adapted to the ex- 
isting home government and the condition of society. In 
the schools of which I gained a personal knowledge, either 
as a pupil (1835-44), or as a teacher (1848-52), corporal 
punishment was of rare occurrence, and then only in 
cases of open insubordination. Whipping a boy for not 
learning his lessons was unknown. The usual manner of 
punishment was by a few strokes on the palm of the hand 
with a light wood ferule. I call to mind only one instance 



COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY 121 

of punishment on an extensive scale. This was when ten 
big boys became so interested in skating on a neighbor- 
ing mill-pond that they came into school late after the 
noon intermission. They stood up in line manfully and 
took their feruling without a whimper. But the next day 
they were in their seats promptly after the ringing of the 
bell. As for myself, I was never whipped either at school 
or at home. During a teaching experience of two winters 
in New Hampshire and two winters in a district school in 
Massachusetts, the list of corporal punishments began 
and ended with one obstreperous boy. 

My friend, John Muir, the distinguished writer and sci- 
entific explorer, who began his education by six years of 
study in a " grammar school " in Scotland, gives me an 
account of the severe discipline in the Scotch schools of 
that period. *^ Any failure in Latin, or French, or gram- 
mar, or spelling, or arithmetic, was followed by a warm 
thrashing, which the boys took as a matter of course and 
seemed to be greatly benefited by it. No disgrace at that 
time was attached to corporal punishment ; it was as 
hearty and natural as the weather ; kept the scholars wide 
awake and mindful ; exerted a marvelous influence on 
memory ; and developed manly Spartan fortitude." Earl 
Barnes, also, takes a very charitable view of the results of 
corporal punishment in the English schools of to-day. 

METHODS OF TEACHING. 

Recitations. — In general there was very little direct 
oral instruction. It was the office of the teacher to keep 
order and hear recitations. It was the duty of pupils to 
memorize text-book lessons and recite them without note, 
comment, or question. The end aimed at was the mem- 



122 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

orizing of text-book lessons. In arithmetic ''sums" 
were worked out by rule, and this work was believed 
to be the highest kind of mental discipline. In the un- 
graded schools of that time, indeed, it was not possible 
for teachers to do much more than to hear recitations. 
Thus the text-book became all important, and almost 
entirely determined the mental training of pupils. The 
dominating influence of this method is strong in American 
schools even at the present time. The sharp criticisms of 
German educators on our undue reliance on text-book 
work is not undeserved. 

In the district school that I attended (1835-44), as in 
most of the schools of that period, written arithmetic was 
pursued on the " individual system," each pupil attacking 
the subject in his own way and working as fast as he 
could. We worked by the rules in the book, and when 
we " got stuck " by some puzzling problem, went to the 
master or to some older boy, who showed us how to do 
it. More than half our entire school time was devoted to 
working out sums in the book. When Colburn's In- 
tellectual Arithmetic appeared, we were put on regular 
drill work in class, much to our delight. Great stress was 
placed on oral spelling and oral reading, m class. We 
had innumerable spelling matches, and frequent evening 
spelling schools. Composition-writing was unknown to 
us. We were supposed to acquire the '' art of writing 
the English language with propriety " by a text-book 
study of Orthography, Etymology, Syntax, and Prosody, 
without writing even a sentence. 

District Schools. — These district schools, however, were 
often far better than their limited curriculum would seem 
to indicate. For a long period, the winter schools were 
taught by young college graduates who were enabled by 



COMMON-SCHO OL CO URSES OF STUD Y t 2 c» 

teaching to '' pay their way " while studying law, medicine, 
or theology. These cultured young men were ready to 
aid ambitious and promising pupils in beginning algebra, 
Latin, or other advanced studies. They encouraged fore- 
handed farmers to send their smartest boys through 
the academy and to college. The village district school 
that I attended was taught for three successive winters by 
young law students, graduates of Dartmouth. It was one 
of these young liberals that started a class of big boys in 
United States history, natural philosophy, and the civil 
government of New Hampshire, and graciously allowed 
me to enter it when only ten years of age. 

A PSYCHOLOGICAL VIEW. 

Attempted Improvements. — There is a recent article 
on '' attempted improvements in the course of study," 
from which, by the kindness of the writer, I am permitted 
to make a liberal quotation. The theory, practice, and 
results of the old school curriculum and its accompanying 
method are graphically summed up and set forth by Pro- 
fessor Paul H. Hanus, of the pedagogical department of 
Harvard University, as follows :^ 

" Once it was assumed that all knowledge was locked up in books ; 
at the same time it was assumed that all knowledge (book-knowledge) 
was power. Hence all intellectual development meant the mastery 
of books. ' To put a child to his book ' was accordingly the phrase 
which described the aim and processes of elementary education. Or, 
in other words, the aim was to enable the child to read, write, and 
cipher in order that he might possess himself of the contents of books. 
Until a command of written and printed speech and facility in numer- 
ical operations were secured, it was assumed that nothing else could 
be learned. 

" Not many years ago, it was still quite generally true that the ele- 

^ T\\Q. Edticatzonal Review, December, 1896. 



124 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

mentary school course of study — the pre-high school course — could be 
described as chiefly a course of study in the school arts, reading, writ- 
ing, arithmetic, and English grammar, together with book-geography 
and a little United States history. It was still quite generally true that 
the school seemed to be divorced from life. . . . 

" It was, therefore, quite generally true that the total permanent re- 
sult of the first eight or nine years of the pupil's school life was the 
ability to read, but not the reading habit ; the ability to spell and write 
words, but no power of expression with the pen ; a varying ability to 
add, subtract, multiply, and divide simple numbers, integral and frac- 
tional, but much uncertainty in all other arithmetical operations ; some 
fragmentary book-knowledge of names and places of our own country 
and of foreign countries ; and some scrappy information relating to 
the history of the United States. 

" A further defect of this barren elementary course of study was to 
create a gap between ' the grades,' as they were called, and the high 
school. The pursuit of literature, art, natural science, foreign languages, 
was usually rigorously excluded from ' the grades ' ; and the pupil, on 
entering the high school, found himself face to face with a bewildering 
number of conceptions wholly new to him, and consequently often as 
uninteresting and as devoid of significance as the drill of his grammar- 
school period." 

MODERN IMPROVEMENTS. 

The Enlarged Curriculum. — The early common-school 
curriculum has been enlarged from time to time during 
the past half century, by the addition of music, drawing, 
physiology and hygiene, history and literature, nature 
study, and the writing of English. In many city schools 
and in some rural schools, the course has recently been 
further enlarged by the addition of elementary algebra 
and geometry. Moreover, in many city schools, manual 
training has been introduced in the form of sewing, cook- 
ing, and tool-work. In many cities graded evening schools 
are kept open during the winter season, and in some 
places, as in San Francisco, such schools are continued 



COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY 



125 



throughout the year, and are regularly graded. These 
schools include the common studies of the elementary 
course, and also bookkeeping, drawing, typewriting, sten- 
ography, and certain high school studies. 

Nor has this general progress been limited to the ele- 
mentary schools. Science and the scientific method have 
led to a partial reconstruction of the curriculum in high 
schools, normal schools, colleges, and universities. 

But the greatest enrichment of the elementary courses 
of study consists, not so much in the addition of new sub- 
jects, as in the change from the formal, deductive, logical, 
philosophical method of former times to the inductive, 
scientific, genetic method pursued, to-day, in the best 
schools. Even primary-grade pupils are now led to the 
direct study of nature at first hand. Instruction is im- 
parted by the voice of the earnest teacher. Pupils are 
introduced to suitable literature at an early age, and are 
led to form a taste for good and wholesome reading. The 
general equipment of schools with small school libraries 
of appropriate modern literature, for supplementary read- 
ing at home or in school, has proved one of the greatest 
sources of enrichment. In many cities and towns free 
public libraries reinforce the school libraries. 

The Kindergarten. — One notable means of enriching 
the common-school course is the kindergarten method of 
training young children from four to six years of age. 
This has proved the possibility of beginning school educa- 
tion before children learn to read and write. Created by 
the genius of Froebel a little before the middle of this 
century, the kindergarten was transplanted from Germany 
to America in 1855. This new educational movement 
was taken up by charitable associations and societies, 
and free kindergartens were opened in various parts of 



126 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

the United States for the children of the poor in great 
cities. 

The first public-school kindergarten was established in 
St. Louis (1873), through the combined influence of Wil- 
liam T. Harris, then City Superintendent of Public Schools, 
and Miss Susan E. Blow. In 1896 the number of public 
school kindergartens in St. Louis was ninety-five. Phila- 
delphia, Boston, Chicago, Milwaukee, New York, and 
many other cities have made the kindergarten a part of 
their school system. According to the report of the 
Commissioner of Education (1895-96), there were in the 
United States 924 free public-school kindergartens, the 
three leading states being Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, 
and New York. 

The kindergarten method has stimulated child study ; 
it has simplified instruction in the lower primary grades ; 
it has introduced a natural method of teaching young 
children to sing ; it has proved its power in moral train- 
ing. It is only a question of time when it will become a 
vital part of all city school systems. The German type of 
kindergarten is not perfect, and it has already been ma- 
terially modified to meet its American environment. It 
will doubtless experience further changes in methods and 
management. 

A DECADE OF CHANGE. 

During the past ten years (1888-98) there has been a 
period of unprecedented educational activity and improve- 
ment all over the land. Marked changes in courses of 
study and in methods of teaching have occasioned some 
friction ; for teachers are conservative, and require time 
to adapt themselves to new conditions. It has conse- 
quently become a matter of vital importance to make 
room for the new studies and to find time for old ones 



COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY 



127 



without overtasking pupils. For the adaptation of courses 
of instruction has only begun, and psychological methods 
are in their infancy. 

The comparative value of studies in the modern school 
curriculum, the distribution of time to each study, the best 
methods of grading and promoting pupils, the value of 
oral instruction as contrasted with the dead formalism 
of text-book study and memorized recitations ; the fitting 
of grammar school work to connect with enlightened high 
school courses ; the closer inter-relation of high schools 
with the varied courses in public colleges and state uni- 
versities ; the extent of elective studies in grammar 
school, high school, college, and university ; — all these are 
now the subjects of earnest investigation by the pedagogic 
departments of universities, by college presidents, by 
normal-school principals, by school superintendents, by 
boards of education, by educational journals, by the lit- 
erary magazines, and by thousands of thoughtful and pro- 
gressive teachers of elementary schools. It may require 
many years of observation, experiment, and discussion 
before any general conclusion shall be reached. Indeed, 
entire agreement on this complex question may never be 
reached. All enlightened educators agree that Chinese 
uniformity is undesirable, even if it were possible. Flex- 
ible courses, adapted to varying conditions are most to 
be desired. 

WHY PROGRESS IS SLOW. 

Conservatism and Progress. — Though the development 
of the primitive colonial school curriculum into the highly 
differentiated course of instruction in the American public 
school system of to-day was slow for a period of two 
centuries, it kept even pace with the evolution of civil 



128 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

government, the extension of the right of suffrage, the 
increase in population, the accumulation of wealth, and 
the industrial and commercial prosperity of our country. 
For under the American system of local school manage- 
ment, uniform development is impossible. As vestiges 
of the " homespun age " are still found in some rural 
sections of our country, so there are schools yet in ex- 
istence that closely resemble those of a century ago. The 
subject of improvement of rural schools is still under 
earnest consideration by all thoughtful educators. The 
question of securing good public school management in 
great cities is one of the most difficult problems before 
the American people to-day. 

The Law of Change. — In taking leave of the old cur- 
riculum and its antiquated pedagogical methods, we do 
so without regret. All enlightened educators recognize 
the truth that school systems and pedagogical methods 
must be subject to change in order to meet the successive 
stages in the political, social, and industrial development 
of a people. '' Every educational system," says a modern 
leader of educational thought in Germany, " grows his- 
torically from the general status of science and the views 
of the world and life of a people and its age ; conse- 
quently there is no system of education generally appli- 
cable to all ages." In a recent paper on '' Scientific vs. 
Poetic Study of Education," Professor Charles De Garmo 
says : ^ 

" How can one make a scientific study of educational ends for the 
present age ? Only, I apprehend, by applying to education the methods 
that have illuminated other fields of research. If every known science, 
natural and human, except education, has been made alive by the his- 
torical or comparative method, why should we not expect it will do as 

1 Educational Revz'eia, March, 1899. 



COMMON-SCHOOL COURSES OF STUDY 129 

much for that ? Such a method would show that, despite the visions 
of the poets, every nation, race, or order having the power, has given 
a training to its youth that in its opinion best furnished the true requi- 
sites for survival. Open at any chapter in the history of civilization, 
and if you would understand the education of the people, study their 
ideals and institutions. In these you will find the key to their educa- 
tion. If the national purposes are simple, the education is marked by 
like simplicity in its aims ; if the national life is complex, the same 
complexity is found in education. Would an American teacher study 
scientifically the ends for which we educate, let him study the evolu- 
tion of this people. It is not an easy task, for in two hundred years 
we have many times repeated, in one portion and another of our vast 
domain, the principal stages of the more slowly developing European 
civilizations. The student will have to follow with fidelity the stages 
of our development in religion, government, and politics ; he will need 
iG follow the unfolding of our material wealth in the development of 
natu^'al resources, the growth of manufacture, and the invention and 
perfection of wonderful instruments of transportation and communica- 
tion ; he will have to investigate the financial problems of universal 
education, the growing independence and increased public services of 
women. In short, to comprehend the ends of our education as they 
are, he v/ill have to become a student of our civilization as it is." 

We believe that the schools of to-day are better in 
most respects than those of the period we have had under 
consideration. But in contrasting the two systems we 
must consider each in relation to its environment. The 
real question which the pedagogical student should at- 
tempt to decide is whether, on the whole, the schools of 
to-day fit pupils for their life-work, under the social condi- 
tions of present times, better than the old-time schools 
fitted children for the life environments of their own 
time. By laws, customs, and traditions, the past holds a 
strong grasp on the present, and we cannot escape from 
it if we would. In a succeeding chapter a few special 
studies on primitive school text-books may be of aid in 
arriving at a final judgment. 
AM. PUB. scH. — 9 



CHAPTER VI 

STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 

It is not a matter of idle curiosity that leads the stu- 
dent of educational history to gather up and examine 
primitive school text-books. In early days these text- 
books absolutely determined the course of study, and 
from them we can gain some knowledge of what school 
children really studied and memorized under the narrow 
curriculum of the common school in early times. In no 
other way can we ascertain the extent to which :he 
schools of to-day are hampered by the conventional cus- 
toms or traditions of the past, or how far we have suc- 
ceeded in finding our better psychological or genetic 
methods of instruction. 

TEXT-BOOKS IN READING AND SPELLING. 

The early English colonists in Virginia and New Eng- 
land brought with them the " hornbook," the church 
catechisms, a few spelling books, an arithmetic, and the 
Bible. The settlers of New York brought with them 
from the Netherlands, the catechism of the Dutch Re- 
formed Church, the Bible, and the primers of Holland, 
and their children were trained to read and write their 
mother tongue according to the spirit of the age. 

In Boston and the surrounding grammar school 
towns, the boys, at the age of seven years, or when they 
could " read the English language by spelling the same," 

130 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS i-i 

or the catechism, or the Psalter, were admitted to the 
grammar schools in which the major study was, in 
the beginning, Latin grammar, and the minor and inci- 
dental branches were reading, writing, and arithmetic. 
In the rural schools of New England the hornbook was 
the only school chart, and the reading books were Dil- 
worth's or Perry's Speller — both English, or the New 
England Primer, or the Psalter, or the New Testament. 
The '^ Psalter " was a collection of the Psalms of David, 
the Proverbs of Solomon, and the Church Creed. 

The English Hornbook. — This " hornbook " was a 
paper sheet on which were printed the alphabet in capitals 
and small letters, the vowels, and combinations of one 
vowel with one consonant ; as, ab, eb, ib, ob, ub ; ba, 
be, bi, bo, bu, by, etc. Then followed the benediction, 
the Lord's Prayer, and the Roman numerals. This 
printed paper was pasted on a piece of thin woodboard 
and covered by a translucent sheet of horn, held in place 
by a brass frame or binding. Authentic specimens of the 
hornbook are now rare even in England. 

The New England Primer. — After the hornbook was 
learned, the "■ New England Primer " was taken up. This 
little book, mainly theological, incidentally educational, 
consisted of the ''Assembly's Shorter Catechism," 
with various additions to adapt it for school use. It was 
also extensively used in families and Sunday-schools. 
The first edition probably appeared about 1660, as an im- 
provement on some primer from England, One of the 
best-known editions is a fac simile reprint of the edition 
of I yyy, the full title of which runs as follows : " The New 
England Primer improved for the more easy attaining 
the true reading of English, to which is added the As- 
sembly of Divines, and Mr. Cotton's Catechism, Boston, 



132 



HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



1777." This correlation of reading and theology affords 
a striking illustration of the extreme type of the educa- 
tional, metaphysical, and theological formalism of that 
time. 

The frontispiece is a full-page wood-cut of '* The Hon- 
orable John Hancock, Esq., President of the American 
Congress." The first page contains the alphabet in capi- 
tals, small letters, and italics ; the next two pages include 
combinations of single vowels with single consonants, as, 
ab, eb, ib, ob, ub ; ba, be, bi, bo, bu ; az, ez, iz, oz, uz ; 
za, ze, zi, zo, zu. Following this there are three pages of 
words for spelling ; the first lesson consisting of words of 
one syllable ; the second, of words of two syllables ; the 
third, of words of three syllables ; and the sixth, of such 
words as aboininatio7i, edification^ humiliation^ mor-tifi- 
ca-tion. 

Reading. — The following is half of the first regular 
lesson in reading : 

" Call no ill names. Speak the truth. 

Use no ill words. Spend your time well. 

Tell no lies. Love your school. 

Hate lies. Mind your book. 

Strive to learn. . Be not a dunce." 

Next there follows an illustrated alphabet, with a short 
couplet after each letter, each couplet having a rude 
wood-cut illustrating the text. The following extracts 
will illustrate the character of these rhymes : 

A. In Adam's fall Q. Queen Esther sues 
We sin-ned all. And saves ih^Jews. 

D. The Deluge drown'd T. Young Timothy 
The Earth around. Learnt sin to fl)^ 

E. Elijah hid W. Whales in the sea 
By Ravens fed. God's voice obey. 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 133 

F. The judgment made X. Xerxes did die 
Felix afraid. And so must I. 

O. Young Obadias, Z. Zaccheus he 

David, Josias, Did cHmb the tree 

All were pious. Our Lord to see. 

In subsequent editions, these rhymed couplets were 
often materially changed. In one edition, I find the fol- 
lowing substitutes for the original text : 

C. The Cat doth play L. The Lion bold 

And after slay. The Lamb doth hold. 

D. A Dog will bite M. The Moon gives light 
A thief at night. In time of night. 

F. The idle Fool O. The royal oak it was the tree 

Is whipped at school. That saved his royal majesty. 

Other Lessons. — The succeeding twenty pages of read- 
ing lessons include the following topics : An "- Alphabet of 
Lessons for Youth," mostly composed of quotations from 
the Bible ; the Lord's Prayer ; the Creed ; Dr. Watts' 
Cradle Hymn ; Verses for Children ; '* Some Proper 
Names of Men and Women, to teach Children to spell 
their Own ; " a wood-cut of '' Mr. John Rogers, the first 
martyr in Queen Mary's reign, who was burnt at Smith- 
field, February 14, 1554," followed by a poem of six pages 
written for his children a few days before his death ; 
Agur's Prayer ; and '^ Choice Sentences," of which the 
following is an example : '' Our weakness and inabilities 
break not the bond of our duties." 

" The Shorter Catechism, agreed upon by the Reverend 
Assembly of Divines at Westminster," fills twenty-four 
pages of print, all of which children were expected to 
read, memorize, and recite. The nature of the task set 
before pupils will best be comprehended by a single 
quotation. 



134 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



" Q. 1 6. Did all mankind fall in Adam's first transgression ? 

A. The covenant being made with Adam, not only for himself, but 
for his posterity, all mankind descending from him by ordinary genera- 
tion, sinned in him, and fell with him in his first transgression." 

The "Assembly Catechism" is followed by another 
catechism of nine pages, entitled : " Spiritual Milk for 
American Babes, Drawn out of the Breasts of both Testa- 
ments for their Soul's Nourishment, by John Cotton." 
In the later editions, Cotton's Catechism was omitted. 
The book closes with a dialogue in verse entitled : " A 
Dialogue between Christ, Youth, and the Devil." 

This primer for teaching reading reminds one of the 
Chinese primer entitled the " Three Character Classic," 
which consists of 178 poetical couplets in rhyme, with 
three words in each line. But this Chinese classic, a 
thousand years old, is more difficult than the New Eng- 
* land Primer. " It is," says Professor John Fryer, of the 
University of California, *' a most difficult and abstruse 
epitome of the whole circle of Chinese knowledge written 
in the classical or dead language, as are all Chinese school 
books. This is no more like the language of home, or of 
every-day life than Greek or Latin are like current Eng- 
lish. When the primer is perfectly memorized, the young 
pupil proceeds to the Thousand Character Classic, a book 
compiled A.D. 550, which he also commits to memory. 
Besides this dreary task, he is expected to spend some 
time daily, as a sort of recreation, in tracing or writing 
characters with the Chinese brush or pencil, commencing 
with large ones, from one to two inches square, and de- 
creasing to the size of the ordinary current hand. Here 
the poor lad only learns the form of the characters, but is 
not given the faintest idea of their meaning." 

The young Chinese boy learned by heart from his 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 



135 



" Three Character Classic," and shouted aloud to his 
teacher, a Chinese sentence, which means in English : 
" Man, as to his nature, is originally virtuous." The 
American boy memorized from his New England Primer, 
the following philosophic rhyme as he learned the first 
letter of the alphabet : '' In Adam's fall, we sin-ned all." 

The Bible. — In connection with the New England 
Primer, the New Testament was largely used as a read- 
ing book. As an opening exercise each pupil in turn 
read one verse. This custom continued in use in most 
schools up to the middle of the nineteenth century. 

At a later colonial period various English readers and 
spellers came gradually into use, such as the '' English 
Reader," Perry's '' Spelling Book, the Only Sure Guide 
to the English Tongue," and Dilworth's " Spelling Book," 
published about the middle of the century, which con- 
tained, in addition to columns of words, a few elementary 
principles of grammar. 

Webster's Spelling Book. — One of the most notable 
of the early American school-book authors was Noah 
Webster, who published, in 1783, "An American Spelling 
Book," which soon went into general use throughout the 
United States. At the beginning of the nineteenth 
century most of the school children in our country began 
both reading and spelling with the use of Webster's 
Spelling Book. 

This famous old schoolbook was developed in strict 
accordance with the formal scholastic logic and the 
orthodox pedagogical philosophy of a century ago. Like 
the hornbook and the primer, it begins with the alphabet 
and proceeds with mathematical exactness to combina- 
tions of one consonant with one vowel ; next proceeds to 
combine three letters, then takes up words of two sylla- 



136 HISTORY OF AMERICA IV PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

bles, and so on up to a-bom-i-na-tion and tm-in-tel-Ii-gi- , 
bil-i-ty. 

This method of developing language by syllables in 
general disregard of thought is best made evident by 
reproducing a few lessons verbatim. After two pages 
devoted to the alphabet in Roman letters, Italic, Old 
English, and script, with the numerals, the reading and . 
spelling lessons proceed as follows : 









No. I- 


-I. 








ba 


be 




bi 


bo 




bu 


by 


ca 


ce 




ci 


CO 




cu 


cy 


da 


de 




di 


do 




du 


dy 


fa 


fe 




fi 


fo 




fu 


fy 


ga 


ge 




gi 


go 




gu 


gy 


go on. 




by 


me. 


it 


is. 




is he. 


go in. 




we 


go. 


to 


me. 




he is. 


go up. 




to 


us. 


to be. 




I am. 


an ox. 




do 


go. 

No. 3-] 


on 
[II. 


it. 




on us. 


is he to 


go- 




is it by 


us. 




we 


; go to it. 


he is to 


go- 




it is by 


us. 




he 


is by me. 


am I to 


go. 




if he is 


in. 




so 


he is up. 


I am to 


go. 




go up 1 


:o it. 




so 


I am up. 








No. 6-VI. 









is he to do so by me. it is to be by me. 

he is to do so by me. by me it is to be. 

so I am to be in. I am to be as he is. 

he is to go up by it. he is to be as I am. 

No. lo-X. 
pha phe phi pho phu phy 



qua que qui quo 

spa spe spi spo spu spy 

sta ste sti sto stu sty 

sea see sci sco sou scy 

swa swe swi swo swu swy 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 137 







No. 


ii-XI. 






spla 


sple 


spli 


splo 


splu 


sply 


spra 


spre 


spri 


spro 


spru 


spry 


stra 


stre 


stri 


stro 


stru 


stry 


shra 


shre 


shri 


shro 


shru 


shry 


sera 


sere 


scri 


scro 


seru 


scry 


scla 


scle 


seli 


sclo 


sclu 


scly 



No. 54, page 41, contains 78 words of three syllables, 
among which the following words are found : '' liturgy, 
blasphemy, litany, betony, scammony, chancery, sorcery, 
orrery." 

Lesson No. 63, of 39 words, contains, '' disbursement, 
disfranchise, hydraulics, embargo." 

Lesson 121 consists of 2J words of seven and eight 
syllables, among which are, " incompatibility, impercepti- 
bility, irresistibility, unintelligibility, immalleability, per- 
pendicularity, indefensibility." 

In the reading lesson attached to this spelling there are 
eleven sentences for reading and definition, two of which 
run as follows : ^' The indivisibility of matter is supposed 
to be demonstrably false." '' Stones are remarkable for 
their immalleability." 

In general, about three fourths of each page was de- 
voted to short, disconnected sentences in reading, the 
other fourth to spelling. Near the end there were seven 
short stories and fables of from ten to twenty lines each. 
When pupils could read the story of '' The Two Dogs," 
and the '' Tale of the Boy that Stole Apples," they 
were ready to begin Webster's '' American Selection " or 
the " English Reader." 

The Little Reader's Assistant. — There lies on my 
table a very rare old book entitled : *' The Little Reader's 
Assistant, by Noah Webster ; Northampton, 1791. Third 



1 38 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Edition." The author says in the preface : " The com^ 
piler of this work has been repeatedly requested by the 
instructors of schools to publish a small book containing 
familiar stories in plain language for the benefit of chil- 
dren when they first begin to read without spelling." 

The table of contents of this primitive first reader is as 
follows : 

" I, A number of stories mostly taken from the history of America, 
I and adorned with cuts. 

11. Rudiments of English Grammar. 

III. A Federal Catechism, being a short and easy explanation of the 

Constitution of the United States of America. 

IV. General Principles of Government and Commerce. 

V. The Farmer's Catechism, containing plain rules of husbandry. 
All adapted to the capacities of children^ 

" The Little Reader's Assistant " is a book of 136 pages, 
48 pages being given to reading; 51 to grammar; 16 to 
the Constitution ; 8 to principles of government and com- 
merce ; 8 to the Farmer's Catechism, and 3 to Reform 
in Spelling. It is interesting as one of the first rough 
attempts in this country at a " correlation of studies." 
It is rudely bound in the thin wood covers of that 
period. The history stories would delight the Herbar- 
tians of the present day. Some of these are as follows : 
"Columbus; Capt. John Smith; First Settlers of New 
England ; Pequod War ; Philip's War ; Story of the 
Taking of Dover; Burning of Schenectady; Speech of 
Loean; Putnam and the Wolf; Putnam a Prisoner," etc. 

The '' Rudiments of Grammar " is a simple presenta- 
tion of the subject to beginners. Noah Webster was a 
reformer, and he boldly cut loose from some of the an- 
cient forms of the Latin grammar. He was half a century 
ahead of his times. The '' Federal Catechism " is a clear 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 



139 



statement of the Civil Government of the United States. 
'' The Farmer's Catechism " is probably the first attempt 
made in this country to introduce the teaching of agricul- 
ture into the common schools. It doubtless was satisfac- 
tory to the hard-fisted farmers of that period. It begins 
as follows : 

" Q. What is the best business a man can do ? 
A. Tilling the ground, or farming. 

Q. Why is farming the best business ? 

A. Because it is the most necessary, the most healthy, the most in- 
nocent, and most agreeable employment of men. 

Q. Why is farming the most innocent employment ? 

A. Because farmers have fewer temptations to be wicked than other 
men. . . . They have but little dealings with others, so that they have 
fewer opportunities to cheat than other men. 

Q. What is the great art of cultivating land to advantage ? 

A, It consists in raising the greatest quantity of produce on the 
smallest quantity of land with the least expense and labor," etc. 

Murray's English Roador. — The title of this notable school book runs 
as follows : " Murray's English Reader, or pieces in prose and poetry 
selected from the best writers, designed to assist young persons to 
read with propriety and effect ; to improve their language and senti- 
ments, and to inculcate some of the most important principles of piety 
and virtue," etc. 

The first lessons, headed " Select Sentences and Paragraphs," 
were made up of philosophical aphorisms like the following : " Dili- 
gence, industry, and proper improvement of time are material duties 
of the young." 

" Virtuous youth gradually brings forward accomplished and flour- 
ishing manhood." 

" Whatever useful or engaging endowments we possess, virtue is 
requisite, in order to their shining with proper lustre." " Society, 
when formed, requires distinctions of property, diversity of conditions, 
subordination of ranks, and a multiplicity of occupations, in order to 
advance the general good." 

The titles of a few selections will show their didactic, abstract, and 
metaphysical character : " The Vanity of Wealth ; " " The Trials of 



I40 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

Virtue ; " " Reflections on a Future State from a View of Winter ; " 
"Change of External Condition Often Adverse to Virtue;" "The 
Good Man's Comfort in Affliction ; " " The Pleasures of Virtuous Sen- 
sibility ; " " The Pleasures of Retirement ; " etc. 

The American Selection. — " The American Selection " was a reading 
book published by Noah Webster (1785). In his preface the author 
says : " I consider it a capital fault in all our schools, that the books 
generally used contain subjects wholly uninteresting to our youth. In 
the choice of pieces, I have been attentive to the political interests of 
America." We find the subject matter of this American reader su- 
perior to the metaphysical abstractions and philosophical essays of the 
English Reader. In the table of contents there are numerous histor- 
ical pieces, such as : Washington's Resignation ; Sketch of the Late 
War (14 pages) ; Captivity of Mrs. Howe, etc. ; patriotic selections, 
such as Warren's Oration on the Boston Massacre ; State papers, such 
as, Declaration of the American Congress, July 6, 1775 ; an Oration by 
Joel Barlow, July 4, 1787. There are several geographical sketches, 
numerous extracts from Shakespeare, a number of humorous dia- 
logues, and a few rules and directions for reading and speaking. 

Modern Reading Books. — About the middle of the 
century there were published a number of graded read- 
ers to meet the needs of graded schools, among which 
McGuffey's series was one of the most popular. For a 
long period these readers were extensively used in the 
Western and Southern States, and, in a revised form, they 
are still in use. Another well-known series was that of 
Salem Town. 

A marked departure from the purely literary " scrap- 
book " style of readers was the series by Marcius Willson, 
in which the author correlated nature studies with read- 
ing. These readers were the forerunners of the numerous 
illustrated supplementary readers and nature stories that 
have enriched the course in reading during the last decade. 
Ten years later there appeared Appleton's Readers, edited 
by William T. Harris, characterized by their high literary 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 141 

standard. These were followed a little later by Swinton's 
series of readers and supplementary readers, which com- 
bined literature with nature stories. Baldwin's School 
Reading by Grades (1897), consists of a series of eight 
carefully-graded books, each book being adapted to the 
work of a single school year. This excellent series is 
typical of the most recent form of numerous school 
reading books. 

The Modern Method. — There has been, during the 
last decade, a great enrichment of the course in reading, 
through the introduction of supplementary reading books 
and leaflets of good literature. In the primary grades the 
fairy tales of Hans Andersen, and of Grimm, stories, 
myths, and fables, put into plain language, open a new 
world of delight to children and stimulate them to read 
for the pleasure of reading. Beautifully illustrated nature 
stories are of unfailing interest, while for the higher 
grades, the subject-matter is drawn from history, liter- 
ature, and science. 

SCHOOL ARITHMETICS. 

In the beginning of colonial times, primitive ordi- 
nances required only reading, writing, and the catechism 
to be taught in common schools. But in most schools 
some instruction was given in arithmetic to the extent of 
the " four rules," and even of '' vulgar fractions," and 
"the rule of three." George H. Martin says: *' In 1789, 
no knowledge even of common arithmetic was required 
for admission to Harvard, nor was the candidate required 
to know anything of geography. But in 18 14 the college 
called for arithmetic to the rule of three, and announced 
that after 18 15 it would also demand a knowledge of 



142 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

ancient and modern geography. In 1816 it asked for 
the whole of the arithmetic. Yale, too, enlarged its 
requirements about the same time." 

English Books. — The earliest text-books used by the 
colonial schoolmasters were brought over from England, 
though afterwards reprinted in the colonies. One of the 
most popular of these was '' Hodder's Arithmetic, or, That 
Necessary Art Made Easy," which passed through many 
editions before 1719. There was another famous English 
text-book (1688), the full title of which ran as follows: 
"' Cocker's Arithmetick, Being a plain and familiar Method, 
suitable to the meanest capacity, for the full understand- 
ing of that incomparable Art, as it is now taught in City 
and Country, Composed by Edward Cocker, late Prac- 
titioner in the Arts of Writing, Arithmetic, and En- 
graving (1688)." Later there came Thomas Dilworth's 
" Schoolmaster's Assistant." 

American Books. — '' The earliest arithmetic written 
and printed in America," says Professor Cajori, in his 
" History of Mathematics," ^' appeared anonymously in 
Boston, in 1729." This book had only a limited sale. 
But at length there was published (1788) an American 
text-book entitled, " A New and Complete System of 
Arithmetic, composed for the use of citizens of the United 
States, by Nicholas Pike, A. M., Newburyport, Mass., 
1788." This bulky volume of 512 pages contained over 
300 rules. Everything was done by rule. The author 
everywhere adheres strictly to the time-honored *' logical " 
method of rule, example, problems, or exercises. At the 
time of its publication there were in use in the United 
States nine different kinds of currency, and the various 
problems given under the head of business exchange re- 
quired fifty-eight specific rules. There were many pages 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 143 

of exercises in " English Money," but only two pages 
were devoted to *' Federal Money." These two pages had 
become necessary because Congress had adopted (1786) 
the decimal currency of the United States. Jefferson de- 
sired to extend the decimal system to weights and meas- 
ures, but this radical reform was rejected. 

This' new American schoolbook constituted a toueh 
piece of resistance for the big boys, who frequently 
attended the winter school until they were twenty-one 
years of age. It kept them busy for winter after winter, 
and few there were that ever got to the end of it. It 
contained a full treatment of Permutation, Progression, 
Alligation, Single Position, Double Position, and many 
other barbarisms which are now, fortunately for the chil- 
dren, eliminated from school text-books. The advanced 
problems, or *' sums," as they were then called, related to 
the mechanical powers, gravity, the calculation of the age 
of the moon, and the time of high and low tides. It 
dominated the type of succeeding arithmetics for more 
than half a century, and its influence on the order of 
topics can still be perceived in many of the text-books 
now in use. 

The order of subjects in this book makes an interesting peda- 
gogical study for teachers. This order reads, in full, as follows : 
simple addition, subtraction, multiplication (40 pages) ; compound 
addition and subtraction, with tables and problems (17 pages) ; 
reduction, ascending and descending, and vulgar fractions (14 
pages) ; decimal fractions (3 pages) ; Federal Money (2 pages) ; 
compound multiplication and division (12 pages) ; reduction of 
coins, (12 pages) ; duodecimals and single rule of three (16 pages); 
rule of three in vulgar fractions and decimals (8 pages) ; rule of 
three inverse (3 pages) ; compound proportion (5 pages) ; conjoined 
proportion (7 pages) ; single fellowship and double fellowship (8 
pages) ; practice (i.e., business calculations in all sorts of problems in 



144 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



all kinds of currency (29 pages) ; tare and trett, extraction of square 
root, cube root, bi-quadrate root, sur-solid root, and roots by approx- 
imation, — in all (24 pages) ; arithmetical progression and geometrical 
progression (32 pages) ; simple interest and interest by decimals (14 
pages) ; annuities, discount, discount by decimals (17 pages) ; barter, 
loss and gain, equation of payments, brokerage, policies of insurance, 
compound interest, compound interest by decimals, discount by com- 
pound interest, annuities or pensions in arrears at compound interest, 
present worth, or annuities at compound interest, annuities, etc., in 
reversion, and purchasing annuities forever, — in all (53 pages) ; cir- 
culating decimals (6 pages) ; alligation alternate (5 pages) ; single 
position and double position (5 pages) ; permutations and combina- 
tions (6 pages) ; " Miscellaneous Questions, with the Method of Solu- 
tion," including problems of all kinds in physics, relating to the me- 
chanical powers, specific gravity, the tides, astronomy, etc. (31 pages) ; 
tables of exchange (16 pages) ; chronological problems (14 pages) ; 
use of logarithms (2 pages) ; " plane trigonometry " (16 pages) ; men- 
suration of superficies and solids (36 pages). 

The final problem at the foot of page 468 reads as follows: "31. 
Suppose a Ship sails from Lat. 43'' North, between North and East, 
till her departure from the Meridian be 45 Leagues, and the sum of 
her distance and difference of Latitude to be 135 Leagues ; I demand 
her distance sailed, and Latitude come to ? " 

Having '' gone through " all the topics catalogued above, 
which are condensed into 468 pages, ambitious pupils met 
with *' An introduction to Algebra, designed for the use 
of academies," which carried them through quadratics, 
thirty-two pages. The pupils who wanted still more of 
mathematics were next *' introduced " to twelve pages on 
conic sections. On the whole, this was a valuable text- 
book for college-bred teachers, and a passable book for 
common-school boys and girls that never got further than 
the rule of three (simple proportion). There is no tradi- 
tion of any prodigy in any common school that ever 
reached and mastered the last proposition under the head 
of ''Section III. of the Hyperbola": Prop. 4. As the 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 



H5 



transverse axis is to the conjugate ; so the conjugate, to 
thelatus rectum of the transverse : AB : VY : : VY : LI. 
See figure 12." 

This full edition was soon followed by an abridgment 
in which algebra and geometry were left out. Pike's 
Arithmetic was followed (1800) by that of Nathan DaboU 
which was succeeded by Daniel Adams' Arithmetic 
(181 1) and Oliver Welch's Arithmetic (18 13). At a later 
period there appeared Smith's Arithmetic, Greenleaf's 
Arithmetic, and an innumerable company of arithme- 
tics. 

Colburn*s Arithmetic. — The first radical departure from 
the old, formal, English type was made by Warren Col- 
burn in his ''Intellectual Arithmetic (1823). This book 
went at once into general use. It was characterized by 
George B. Emerson as '' a faultless text-book." David 
P. Page, author of " Theory and Practice," said of it : 
** In three weeks I had mastered it, and I had gained in 
that time more knowledge of the principles of arithmetic 
than I had ever acquired in all my life before." This book 
introduced the modern inductive and analytical method 
of teaching mental, or intellectual, or oral arithmetic. 
The abuse of this book consisted in crowding it upon 
young and immature minds, an abuse from which I suf- 
fered to some extent when a small boy. Such questions 
as the following confused me at nine or ten years of age : 
Question " 9 " p. 86. " 2 eighths of 72 is 3 tenths of how 
many fifths of 40?" Problem 183, p. 143. ''A man 
being asked how many sheep he had, answered, that if he 
had as many more, ^ as many more and 2\ sheep, he 
would have lOO. How many had he ? " 

Graded Books. — At a later period, to meet the needs 

of graded schools, various *' three-book series " of arith 
AM. PUB. scH. — 10. 



146 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

metics were published, of which the Robinson series and 
the Ray series are familiar types. 

Reform Movements. — In consequence of the general 
introduction of music, drawing, literature, and elementary 
science into both primary and grammar school grades, and 
of elementary geometry and algebra into the higher gram- 
mar grades of city schools, the undue proportion of time 
formerly devoted to arithmetic has, within the last de- 
cade, been greatly reduced. The introduction into city 
schools of manual training in wood-work, cooking, and 
sewing- is intensifying the demand for still further limita- 
tions of the time given to this study. The reform move- 
ment in the teaching of arithmetic has found aggressive 
leaders among university presidents, pedagogical profes- 
sors, school principals, teachers, and hard-headed business 
men. 

ENGLISH GRAMMARS. 

" The Young Lady's Accidence," one of the early Eng- 
lish grammars published in the United States (1804), 
seems to have been the first English grammar used in the 
Boston schools. It owes its title to the fact that Caleb 
Bingham, the author, wrote it for use in a private school 
for girls which he had opened in the city of Boston. Pre- 
vious to this time, instruction in text-book grammar had 
been limited to a few pages inserted in " Dilworth's 
Speller." 

Lindley Murray's English Grammar. — This book, first 
published in England (1795), was soon after republished 
in this country, where it immediately went into extensive 
use. It dominated the type of all succeeding American 
text-books in this school study for more than half a cen- 
tury. It was an Anglicized Latin grammar which applied 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS i^y 

to the English vernacular most of the forms of the highly 
inflected Latin tongue. Special importance was attached 
to " parsing " according to Latin models, and to the cor- 
rection of innumerable examples of " false syntax." 

There lies before me a copy of this famous text-book, printed (1824) 
at Exeter, N. H. It is an octave of 334 pages, of which 28 are devoted 
to orthography, 95 to etymology, 87 to syntax, 32 to prosody, 17 to 
punctuation and capitals, and 60 pages to an " Appendix, containing 
rules and observations for assisting young persons to write with per- 
spicuity and accuracy. To be studied after they have acquired a com- 
petent knowledge of English Grammar." In his preface the author 
says it has been his aim to make his definitions and rules " as intelli- 
gible to young minds as the nature of the subject and the difficulties 
attending it would admit. " From the sentiment generally admitted, 
that a proper selection of faulty composition is more instructive to the 
young grammarian than any rules and examples of propriety that can 
be given, the compiler has been induced to pay peculiar attention to 
this part of the subject ; and though the instances of false grammar, 
under the rules of syntax, are numerous, it is hoped they will not be 
found too many, when their variety and usefulness are considered." * 

This ancient, '' logical," formal, and pedantic text-book 
opens with the following misleading definition : *' English 
grammar is the art of speaking and writing the English 
language with propriety." Then there follows a long 
treatise on " orthography," which is a formal dictionary 
disquisition of eighteen pages on the sounds of the let- 
ters. The author's treatment of etymology has been so 
closely followed in many American school grammars that 
it might pass current in the schools of to-day. Murray's 
twenty-two rules of syntax have been closely followed by 
the authors of most modern grammars. 

The models of etymological and syntactical parsing, 
though formal and Latinized, are shorter and simpler 
than those given by many of his successors and imitators. 
The first model for '' etymological parsing" is as follows: 



148 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

" Virtue ennobles us." Virtue is a common substantive, of the 
neuter gender, the third person, the singular number, and in the nomi- 
native case. (Decline the noun.) Ennobles is a regular verb active, 
indicative mood, present tense, and the third person singular. (Repeat 
the present tense, the imperfect participle.) Us is a personal pronoun, 
of the first person plural, and in the objective case. (Decline it.) 

The "specimen of syntactical parsing" runs as 'follows: "Vice 
produces misery." Vice is a common substantive, of the neuter gender, 
the third person, the singular number, and in the nominative case. 
Produces is a regular verb active, indicative mood, present tense, third 
person singular, agreeing with nominative, vice, according to Rule I. 
which says : (here repeat the rule.) Misery is a common substantive, 
of the neuter gender, the third person, the singular number, and the 
objective case, governed by the active verb, produces, according to 
Rule XL which says," etc. There are only sixteen short sentences 
given for " syntactical parsing," but the models cover seven pages. 

The thirty-two soHd pages on " prosody " must have 
proved a stumbling block to the boys and girls of former 
times. The probability is that very few of them ever 
reached the 224th page of the book. The author states 
that the appendix on *' Perspicuity and Accuracy " is 
quoted, in the main, from text-books on rhetoric by Blair 
and Campbell. The student of methods will find in Mur- 
ray's Grammar the origin of much of the unprofitable and 
distasteful drudgery with which the school study of Eng- 
glish grammar has been encumbered for a century, and 
with which, in many schools, it is still loaded down. 

Webster's Grammar. — Noah Webster, one of the most 
notable of American text-book makers, published (1783- 
86), " A Grammatical Institute of the English Language," 
which comprised (i) ''The American Spelling Book;" 
(2) " A Plain and Comprehensive Grammar ; " (3) " The 
American Selection " (a school reading book). Web- 
ster's " Speller " went at once into general use in the 
United States, but his " Grammar " seems to have been 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 149 

limited mainly to New England. In 1793 he published 
" The Little Reader's Assistant," which included in one 
small book a correlation of easy reading lessons, the rudi- 
ments of grammar, and civil government. 

In his preface to the " Rudiments of Grammar, compiled at the re- 
quest of the Trustees of the Grammar School at Hartford," the author 
remarks : " There has been a general complaint among the teachers 
of schools that the Second Part of the Grammatical Institute is a work 
too complex and difficult for young beginners in Grammar. The 
author is sensible of the justness of this complaint, for Grammar is a 
subject difficult in itself, and not easily comprehended even by adults. 
// is a mistake that childre7i ever learti their native tongtie by rule ; 
they learn it by ear and practice. Rules are drawn from the most 
general and approved practice, and serve to teach young students how 
far their own practice in speaking agrees with the general practice of 
the nation, and thus enable them to correct their errors." 

The original preface to Goold Brown's " First Lines in English 
Grammar " (1823), thirty years later, reads, in part, as follows : " The 
only successful method of teaching grammar, is to cause the principal 
definitions and rules to be committed thoroughly to memory, that they 
may ever afterwards be readily applied. And the pupil should be 
alternately exercised in learning small portions of his book, and then 
applying them in parsing, till the whole is rendered familiar." 

A comparison of these two statements made by two eminent gram- 
marians shows that the reign of " formal grammar " had not only con- 
tinued unbroken for thirty years, but that it had also become intensi- 
fied. The preface by Webster frankly stated a truth now generally 
accepted by teachers, while that of Brown emphasized the deadening 
formalism of the ancient regime. 

Other Text-Books on Grammar. — In the half century 
succeeding the publication of Murray's Grammar, there 
were published in this country about two hundred differ- 
ent text-books on English grammar, all modeled mainly 
on the plan of that famous book. Among the best known 
of these were the grammars of Kirkham, Smith, Bullions, 
and Goold Brown. 



150 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



Kirkham's Grammar (1823) introduced " a new systematic order of 
parsing." Taking the sentence, " John's hand trembles," the follow- 
ing is the model for parsing the word hand : " Ha7id is a noun, the 
name of a thing ; common, the name of a sort or species of things ; 
neuter gender, it denotes a thing without sex ; third person, spoken 
of ; singular number, implies but one ; and in the nominative case, it 
is the actor and subject of the verb trembles, and governs it agreeably 
to Rule 3. The nominative case governs the verb ; that is, the nomi- 
native determines the number and person of the verb. Declined : Sing, 
nom, hand, poss. hand's, obj. hand ; plu. nom. hands, poss. hands', 
obj. hands." His model for parsing a verb is too long to be quoted. 

Goold Brown in " Brown's Institutes " (1823), says in his preface : 
" In the whole range of school exercises there is none of greater im- 
portance than that of parsing ; and yet, perhaps, there is none more 
defectively conducted. Scarcely less useful, as a means of instruction, 
is the practice of correcting false syntax orally, by regular and logical 
forms of argument ; nor does this appear to have been more ably 
directed towards the purposes of discipline." 

The author's formula for parsing a verb is found in Praxis V. as 
follows : Sentence — " Piety has the purest delight attending it." Has 
is an irregular active transitive verb, from have, had, havi7ig, had ; 
found in the indicative mood, present tense, third person, and singular 
number. 

1. A verb is a word that signifies to be, to act, or to be acted 
upon. 

2. An irregular verb is a verb that does not form the preterit and 
the perfect participle by assuming d or ed. 

3. An active transitive verb is a verb that expresses an action which 
has some person or thing for its object. 

4. The indicative mood is that form of the verb which simply indi- 
cates or declares a thing, or asks a question. 

5. The present tense is that which expresses what now exists or is 
taking place. 

6. The third person is that which denotes the person or thing merely 
spoken of. 

7. The singular number is that which denotes but one. 

After reading a formula like this we cease to wonder 
that half a century ago pupils detested grammar ; and 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 151 

that even teachers began a general rebellion against such 
interminable repetitions of definitions and rules. 

Goold Brown's "Grammar of Grammars" (1851), a 
book of 1002 pages, fortunately intended for teachers 
and adults, not for pupils, is a remarkable compilation of 
examples of '' false syntax " gleaned from English litera- 
ture and from the authors of other school grammars. One 
rises from its perusal with the despairing feeling that 
nobody ever succeeded " in writing the English language 
with propriety." 

Having waded through the formalism of the past, 
let us turn, as a pleasant relief, to trace the evolution 
of a more rational method of studying our mother 
tongue. 

An Improved Grammar. — It was my good fortune in 
a New Hampshire village school to begin the study of 
grammar when ten years of age (1840) with a copy of 
'' English Grammar on the Productive System ; a method 
of instruction recently adopted in Germany and Switzer- 
land, by Roswell C. Smith." The inductive method of 
this book was a marked improvement on the logical for- 
malism of previous grammars. Though our teacher made 
no explanations, confining himself rigidly to asking the 
questions in the book, we had little difficulty in under- 
standing the lessons. At the end of a year we began to 
" parse " in Thomson's " Seasons," which was followed 
by Young's " Night Thoughts.'' This was our introduc- 
tion to English literature. But we were never required 
to write a composition, nor even a detached sentence. - 
Learning to write the English language by actually trying 
to write it was at that time unknown in the common 
school. In the academy, even when pursuing a Latin 
course, which included, in order, a Latin Grammar and 



152 



HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



Reader, Sallust, Caesar, and Virgil, we were never once 
required to render a written translation. 

Sentence Analysis. — The publication of Greene's 
*' Analysis " (1847) marks the beginning of a revolt against 
the dead formalism of grammatical teaching. One sen- 
tence in the preface of this book conveys a pedagogical 
truth now generally recognized : " As a sentence is the 
expression of thought, and as the elements of a sentence 
are the expressions for the elements of thought, the pupil 
who is taught to separate a sentence into its elements is 
learning to analyze thoiigJit, and consequently to think. 

Greene's *' Analysis," a book designed for secondary 
schools, was soon followed by Greene's '' Introduction," 
which was well adapted for use in elementary schools. It 
contained the elements of etymology and syntax, clearly 
stated, and provided for daily exercises in sentence-anal- 
ysis and sentence-making. 

This new feature of gramrnatical work was immediately 
incorporated into revised editions of other text-books on 
grammar ; but parsing according to Latin models was re- 
tained in all its dead formalism, and thus a double burden 
was imposed on the school children. Sentence analysis, 
introduced as a reform, was soon carried to a painful ex- 
treme of complicated minuteness, and was finally made 
mechanical by the devices of wonderfully constructed 
'' diagrams." But the children still failed '' to write and 
speak the English language with propriety." The Mur- 
ray type of grammars contained no suggestions whatever 
about the writing of compositions. 

Language Lessons. — Meantime progressive teachers 
were beginning to train pupils to write good English by 
requiring them to write short compositions upon subjects 
suited to the age and capacity of children, and upon 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 



153 



topics connected with school lessons in history, geography, 
and reading. This new movement in language practice 
was embodied in Swinton's " Language Lessons " (1874), 
which determined the type of numerous succeeding pub- 
lications for school use. 

The central idea of Swinton's Language Lessons is set 
forth in the author's preface as follows : 

" This book is an attempt to bring the subject of language home to 
children at the age when knowledge is acquired in an objective way, 
by practice and habit, rather than by the study of rules and definitions. 
In pursuance of this plan, the traditional presentation of grammar in 
a bristling array of classifications, nomenclatures, and paradigms has 
been wholly discarded. The pupil is brought in contact with the living 
language itself ; he is made to deal with speech, to turn it over in a 
variety of ways, to handle sentences ; so that he is not kept back from 
the exercise — so profitable and interesting — of using language till he 
has mastered the anatomy of the grammarian. Whatever of technical 
grammar is here given is evolved from work previously done by the 
scholar." 

Swinton's '^ English Grammar and Composition " 
(1877), f^^ more advanced pupils, emphasized sentence 
building and composition writing. It boldly lopped off 
orthography and prosody as a part of modern grammar. 
The author says in his preface : " The necessity of a grad- 
uated course of training in the mother tongue, extending 
over some years, and beginning in practice and ending in 
theory, is now generally recognized and acted on . . . It is 
earnesUy recommended that the grammar be taken in con- 
nection with the school composition, the author's ideal 
study being : three grammar lessons and two composition 
lessons a week." 

SCHOOL GEOGRAPHIES. 

Dwight's Geography. — During the colonial period 



1 54 HISrOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

geography was not included by law in the common-school 
curriculum though sometimes taught incidentally. The 
full title of one of the earliest of American text-books 
on this subject runs as follows : *' A short but comprehen- 
sive System of the Geography of the World ; by way of 
Question and Answer. Principally designed for Children 
and Common Schools. By Nathaniel Dwight. Boston, 
1801." In his preface to the first edition, dated Hartford 
(1795), republished in the sixth edition (1801), the author 
says: 

" During an employment of several years in school keeping I observed 
that the science of Geography was but little attended to in the early 
days of childhood. . . . The expense of this book is so small that it 
may be easily afforded, and the form of a catechism admits of its being 
made more comprehensive, and more easily understood by children, 
than any of the small geographies, which have heretofore been designed 
for them. It will enable them usefully to improve many hours of their 
early years, which, for want of something of this kind, are entirely 
lost." 

Dwight's geography is a well-printed volume of 212 
pages, bound in the old-fashioned thin wood covers. It 
is descriptive text exclusively, containing neither maps 
nor wood-cuts, and no reference is made to an atlas. 
It opens with five pages of definitions relating to the 
natural divisions of land and water, to latitude, longitude, 
mathematical geography, and forms of government. 
The following extracts from a general description of New 
England illustrate the manner of treatment : 

" Q. What are the general characteristics of the people of New 
England } 

A. They are an industrious and orderly people, economical in their 
livings, and frugal in their expenses. . . . They are plain and simple in 
their manners, and, on the whole, they form perhaps the most pleasing 
and happy society in the world." 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 



155 



" O. What are their diversions ? 

A. Dancing is a favorite one of both sexes. Sleigh-riding in winter, 
skating, playing ball (of which there are several different games), gun- 
ning and fishing, are the principal ; gambling and horse-jockeying are 
practiced by none but worthless people, who are despised by all per- 
sons of respectability and considered as nuisances in society." 

" Q. What is the state of science in New England ? 

A. It is greatly cultivated, and more generally diffused among the 
inhabitants than in any other part of the world. Every town has or 
ought to have a school in it, where the children are early taught read- 
ing, writing, and arithmetic." 

Morsels Geography. — Jedidiah Morse, D.D., the 
father of Professor S. F. B. Morse who invented the elec- 
tric telegraph, was the author of one of our first school- 
books. The preface to the first edition, dated New Haven, 
1789, is interesting reading, not only for the light it throws 
on the state of education, but for its illustration of the 
pride of American citizenship in the new-born republic : 

" There is no science better adapted to the capacities of youth, and 
more apt to cultivate their attention, than Geography. An acquaint- 
ance with this science, more than with any other, satisfies that perti- 
nent curiosity, which is the predominating feature of the youthful mind. 
It is to be lamented that this part of education has been so long neg- 
lected in America. Our young men, universally, have been much 
better acquainted with the geography of Europe and Asia, than with 
that of their own State and country. The want of suitable books has 
been the cause, we hope the sole cause, of this shameful defect in our 
education. Until within a few years, we have seldom pretended to 
write, and hardly to think for ourselves. We have humbly received 
from Great Britain our laws, our manners, our books, and our modes 
of thinking ; and our youth have been educated rather as the subjects 
of the British king, than as the citizens of a free and independent na- 
tion. But the scene is now changed. The revolution has been favor- 
able to science in general ; particularly to that of the geography of our 
own country. In the following pages, the Author has endeavored to 
bring this valuable branch of knowledge home to common schools 



1 56 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

and to the cottage fireside by comprising, in a small and cheap vol- 
ume, the most entertaining and interesting part of his American Uni- 
versal Geography." 

In 181 2 there was published a revised edition, the full title of which 
reads as follows : " Geography made easy : being an Abridgment of 
the American Universal Geography. To which are prefixed Elements 
of Geography, For the use of Schools and Academies in the United 
States of America. By Jedidiah Morse, D.D., author of the American 
Universal Geography, and the American Gazetteer. * There is not a 
son or daughter of Adam, but has some concern both in Geography 
and Astronomy.' — Dr. Watts. Illustrated with a Map of the World, 
and a Map of North America. Fifteenth Edition, and third of this 
new abridgment." 

This well-written book of 360 pages octavo, opens with 
20 pages devoted to the history of geography and astron- 
omy, and to a full description of the solar system, fol- 
lowed by 20 pages on physical geography. Then there 
are 180 pages given to North America and " Independent 
America, or the United States." The remainder of the 
book treats of the rest of the world. The author's re- 
marks on the condition of education in the United States 
(1810-12) are of special interest to the student of educa 
tional history, and we quote as follows : 

" State of Literature. — There are in the United States (1810) thirty 
colleges ; three or four of them, however, exist only on paper ; and 
upwards of eighty academies. A plan is now forming under the aus- 
pices of Congress, for establishing a National University at the seat 
of Government." 

Massachusetts. — " In Boston there are seven public schools, viz. : 
one Latin grammar school, three English grammar schools, and 
three for writing and arithmetic, supported wholly at the expense of 
the town ; in these schools, the children of every class of citizens (the 
black excepted) freely associate. Next to these in importance, are the 
academies, of which there are about 20 in the State. In these the 
sciences are taught, and youth fitted for the university. Harvard Uni- 
versity, at Cambridge, with respect to its library, philosophical appa- 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 157 

ratus, and professorship, is the first literary institution in the United 
States." 

Connecticut. — " In no part of the world is the education of all ranks 
of people more attended to than in Connecticut. Yale College was 
established in 1 701. The students are divided into four classes. Their 
number in 1810 was 255." 

Rhode Island. — " The literature of this State is confined principally 
to the towns of Providence and Newport. No provision is made by 
law for the establishment of town- schools." 

New York. — " Dutch schools are now discontinued and the lan- 
guage will probably soon cease to be used. There are twelve or 
fourteen incorporated academies in the State, and two col- 
leges. Columbia College, in the city of New York, is in a flourishing 
state, and has more than 100 scholars, besides medical students. 
Union College, in Schenectady, though an infant institution, is deserv- 
edly celebrated. The annual expense of board, tuition, etc., is less 
than $100. New York City contained in 1810, 93,914 inhabitants." 

PeJtnsylvama. — " There are many private schools in different parts 
of the State ; and to promote the education of poor children, the legis- 
lature has appropriated a large tract of land for the establishment of 
free schools. A seminary is established at Philadelphia by the name 
of The University of Pennsylvania. This State contained in 1810, 
810,091 inhabitants." 

Virginia. — " There are three colleges, William and Mary, Hampden- 
Sidney, and Washington. There are also several academies, one at 
Alexandria, one at Norfolk, one at Hanover, and others in other 
places." 

Modern Books. — During the first half of the nine- 
teenth century Woodbridge's, Olney's, Smith's, and 
Mitchell's geographies came into use at successive periods. 
They were large books, crowded with formal descriptive 
text and crammed with thousands of map questions the 
answers to which had to be hunted out in a large separate 
" atlas " which accompanied them. At a later period 
there came into use the *' three book series," Primary, In- 
termediate, and Grammar School, such as Cornell's, Mon- 
teith's, Guyot's, and some others, with text and maps in 



158 HISTOR Y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

each book of each series. A marked innovation on the 
old-style text-books is found in the Guyot series which 
made prominent the study of physical geography. 

The three-book series having been found too burden- 
some for pupils, the latest geographies consist of only 
two books, Primary and Grammar School. The modern 
psychological and pedagogical method of teaching ge- 
ography, so far as it is embodied in text-books, is to be 
found in Redway and Hinman's Natural Series (1898), 
comprising two books, — " The Natural Elementary Ge- 
ography," and '' The Natural Advanced Geography," — 
both of which will be welcomed by teachers that are in 
sympathy with the modern movement to simplify the 
teaching of geography and bring it into harmony with the 
modern course in nature study. 

EARLY BOOKS ON PEDAGOGICS. 

The first notable book on common school pedagogics 
published in New England (1829), was written by Rev. 
Samuel R. Hall, and was entitled '* Lectures on School 
Keeping." The author had taught in district schools 
when he was studying for the ministry ; he had also 
organized the first private normal school in New Eng- 
land, consequently he knew something about his subject. 
This unpretentious little volume, being a practical book, 
went at once into extensive use in New England and 
New York. 

A few years later there appeared several small treatises 
such as, " The Teacher," by Jacob Abbott ; " Suggestions 
on Education," by Catherine E. Beecher ; " The Teacher 
Taught," by Emerson Davis ; and '^ The Teacher's 
Manual," by Thomas H. Palmer. 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 159 

"■ The School and the Schoolmaster " was a pedagogical 
volume of 552 pages published by Harper and Brothers, 
1842. Part I., " The School," by Professor Alonzo Potter, 
of Union College, N. Y., treated of general education, 
the existing condition of common schools and the means 
of improving them ; of the duties of parents, trustees and 
inspectors ; and of the need of a state normal school. 
It was ably written and is still of interest to the educa- 
tional student. Part II., "The Schoolmaster," by George 
B. Emerson, of Boston, President of the American Insti- 
tute of Instruction, treated of " the proper character, 
studies, and duties of the teacher, with the best methods 
for the government and instruction of common schools." 
George B. Emerson, was one of the foremost practical 
teachers in New England, and his part of the book is so 
pervaded by common-sense, it is delightful reading even 
now. His suggestions on oral instruction and the use of 
text-books, on the correlation of geography and history, 
on composition and grammar, and on studies in natural 
science, all are in accord with modern ideas. Through 
the liberality of some friend of common schools whose 
name was withheld, a copy of this book was placed in 
every school district in the state of New York. 

This book constituted my entire pedagogical outfit 
when teaching my first district school. 

"- Theory and Practice of Teaching " (1847), by David 
P. Page, was an inspiring book which went at once into 
general use in normal schools and academies. 

Wickersham's '' Methods of Instruction " (1865), was a 
valuable educational contribution by one of the leading 
educators in Pennsylvania. About this time Henry 
Barnard published '' Russell's Normal Training." Pro- 
fessor William Russell, graduate of Glasgow University, 



l6o HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

and author of numerous school readers and books on 
elocution, was one of the pioneers in organizing private 
normal schools in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, 
and also one of the active promoters of state normal 
schools. He was a prominent leader in the educational 
life of New England, as a lecturer at Teachers' Institutes, 
and as a teacher of elocution, during and after the great 
revival inaugurated by Horace Mann. His rich scholar- 
ship, his unselfish devotion, and his noble character 
greatly endeared him to his pupils. 

BOOKS FOR CHILDREN. 

The first century of colonial life was a dismal period 
for children's books. Juvenile literature was limited to 
spelling book, primer or catechism, and the Bible. The 
grown-up people on the isolated farms fared little better ; 
for books of any kind were costly and scarce. The col- 
lege-bred clergyman had a small library limited to college 
class books and a few volumes of ponderous theology. 

The one indispensable book in every family, next to 
the Bible and the church catechism, was the annual 
"■ almanack," which hung suspended by a string near the 
great open fireplace. One of the earliest publications of 
the solitary printing press in New England (1639) was 
Pierce's " Almanack, calculated for New England." In 
addition to the calendar of time, these early almanacs 
were filled up with weather predictions, old saws and 
maxims, and bits of theological aphorisms. They were 
well thumbed by all members of the family. At a later 
period, Benjamin's Franklin's almanac, known under 
the name of " Poor Richard's Almanack," circulated 
everywhere in all the colonies. It had a spice of humor, 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS i6i 

and was full of wise maxims and prudent aphorisms 
about diligence and economy, sometimes put into rhyme. 
There were things that stuck like burs in the memory of 
young and old alike. They exerted a marked effect upon 
the American people, and they still hold a place in liter- 
ature. 

Bunyan's " Pilgrim's Progress " was reprinted in Boston 
(1681), and was eagerly read by the few children that could 
get hold of it. About the beginning of the eighteenth 
century a few books designed by theologians for the good 
of children, drifted over from England, such as, "Godly 
Children Their Parents' Joy," *' Young People Warned," 
and Janeway's '' Token for Children." 

Cotton Mather tried his hand in making juvenile litera- 
ture, and wrote a short booklet entitled, " Good Lessons 
for Children in Verse." ^ Mather's "Token for the Chil- 
dren of New England," was a reprint of an English book, 
with a supplement by Cotton Mather containing, " Exam- 
ples of children in whom the fear of God was remarkably 
budding before they died." From such melancholy leaf- 
lets, even the New England Primer was a pleasant relief 
for children. 

Then came " Robinson Crusoe " (1714), which still ranks 
as one of the most enchanting of all books for growing 
boys. Next came " Gulliver's Travels " and " The Vicar 
of Wakefield," and near the end of the eighteenth century 
several real books for little children, such as " Goody Two 
Shoes," " Tom Thumb," and " Mother Goose Melodies," 
all of which were originally published in England by 
John Newberry, the notable London printer. 

During the Colonial period there were few newspapers, 

^ See New England Magazine, April 1899. Article by Charles 
Welsh. 

AM. PUB. SCH. II 



1 62 HISTORY OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

and those had a limited circulation. " In 1775," says 
McMaster, '' there were in the entire country, thirty-seven 
papers in circulation. Fourteen of them were in New 
England, four were in New York, and nine in Pennsylva- 
nia. In Virginia and North Carolina there were two 
each, in Georgia one, in South Carolina three." Most of 
these papers were weeklies. They were carefully pre- 
served and passed from neighbor to neighbor. 

Early in the nineteenth century, the two popular novels 
were "■ The Scottish Chiefs," and '' Thaddeus of Warsaw." 
Twenty years later. Pope's " Essay on Man," Young's 
'' Night Thoughts," and Thomson's *' Seasons," were 
read and studied as literature, in common schools and 
academies. Watts on the " Improvement of the Mind," 
was a text-book on intellectual philosophy. 

My own personal knowledge of books for children in 
New England began about the year 1837. My first 
library at that time consisted of Webster's Speller, a 
progressive reader, four bound volumes of " Peter Parley's 
Magazine," and a book of " Stories About Indian Fights." 
When a little older, I read and re-read two bound volumes 
of *' The Penny Illustrated Magazine," from which I 
gained a pretty good knowledge of all the famous naval 
victories of the Americans over the British in the war of 
1812. Then I plunged into *' Josephus," and '' RoUin's 
Ancient History." In my grandfather's library I discov- 
ered a large bundle of old '' Almanacks," which proved 
a source of endless delight. My father was reading 
Combe's '' Constitution of Man," and I read it too, 
though it was then held to be a dangerous book. Next I 
found among my father's books Pope's ** Essay on Man," 
Pope's ''Translation of the Iliad," Young's ''Night 
Thoughts," Thomson's " Seasons," Pike's Arithmetic, and 



STUDIES ON COMMON-SCHOOL TEXT-BOOKS 163 

Murray's Grammar, all of which became of more or less 
interest. Stowed away on a dusty shelf in the garret, 
I discovered '' Peter Wilkins," '' Gulliver's Travels," '' His- 
tory of the Pirates," and several other thrilling books. 

The last half of the nineteenth century brought with it 
a juvenile literature of great variety from the pens of 
Hawthorne, Miss Alcott, Longfellow, Whittier, and a 
score of others ; and this has been enriched by Grimm, 
Hans Andersen, Charles Dickens, and recent writers too 
numerous to mention. 



CHAPTER VII 

EDUCATIONAL OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 

School Enrollment. — On the latest school celebration 
of Washington's birthday, the national flag was unfurled 
upon more than two hundred thousand schoolhouses, 
stretching from ocean to ocean. Our national songs, sung 
at the opening of the schools in New England, were 
caught up, hour after hour, with the course of the sun. 
It was high noon in the schools of Boston before the 
children in San Francisco had sung " The Star Spangled 
Banner," in their opening exercises. Before the waves of 
light, and color, and song had reached the school outposts 
in Alaska, the symbols of liberty and law along the Atlan- 
tic had been furled, and the schools dismissed. During 
this day, more than fourteen millions of public school 
children saluted the national flag, sung the national songs, 
were instructed in American history, and inspired with 
patriotic fervor by four hundred thousand public school 
teachers. 

In all institutions of learning, public and private, in- 
cluding elementary, secondary, and higher education, there 
is found to be a total enrollment of 16,742,000 pupils and 
students. Of this vast number, about one million and a 
half are enrolled in private educational institutions, and 
over fourteen and a half millions in common schools and 
other public institutions of learning. 

Who Control the Schools ? — Under a free government, 
public schools represent the wants, spirit, and ideals of a 

164 



OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 165 

nation. As local self-government is a marked characteristic 
of our civil institutions, it follows that local control by dis- 
trict, town, city, or county, under general state law, should 
be a distinctive feature of our public schools. Unlike Euro- 
pean nations, we have no centralized national system of 
education. We have a multiplicity of state school laws, 
hundreds of special provisions in city charters, hundreds 
of differently constituted city boards of education, thou- 
sands of town or county school officers, and tens of thou- 
sands of district school trustees. Under such decentral- 
ized control, exact uniformity of school management is 
impracticable and undesirable. In the words of Dr. A. D. 
Mayo, '' the American common school is only the Ameri- 
can people keeping school." 

If we sometimes become impatient of the slow evolu- 
tion of public schools, we must bear in mind that they are 
improved mainly by the public opinion of the communi- 
ties in which they are organized. They are under the 
direct control of the people, and are vitalized by the in- 
dustrial, political, and educational advancement of society. 

In the beginning the early colonial schools, modeled after 
European ideals, were partly under denominational con- 
trol, partly under the civil power ; they were chiefly sup- 
ported by tuition fees, but were sometimes maintained 
entirely by taxation. Under the fostering care of the 
people, these primitive schools have been developed into 
a system of free public education rising in successive 
stages from the kindergarten, through the primary and 
the grammar grades ; through the high, the normal, and the 
polytechnic school ; through the colleges of agriculture 
and the mechanic arts ; culminating in the free state uni- 
versity. 

The following axiomatic principles have become estab- 



l66 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

lished in the minds of the people, and are now generally- 
accepted and acted upon by state governments : First, 
that it is the duty of a republican government, as an act 
of self-preservation, to establish and maintain a system of 
free public schools under the exclusive control of the civil 
power. Second, that the property of the state shall be 
taxed to educate the children of the state. 

Simple propositions these seem to us now, but it has 
required two and a half centuries of experiment and strug- 
gle, and two great wars, — the Revolutionary war, and the 
Civil war, — to bring them into full recognition throughout 
all the land. The public-school system is now firmly in- 
trenched in the revised constitutions of each and every 
state in the Union, is regulated by state legislative enact- 
ment, is supported, incidentally, by the interest on in- 
vested school funds, but mainly by direct state, county, 
city, district, and town taxation. In the older states, 
which have become thickly settled, the school system is 
developed in full. In new and sparsely settled states, if 
schools are still crude, and are yet in process of formation, 
their condition is a necessity of pioneer life. 

Educational Progress. — The true economy of school 
management consists in the employment of professionally 
trained teachers. While it cannot be claimed, as yet, that 
we have reached the standard of fully recognizing teach- 
ing as a profession, we are steadily approximating this 
high ideal. The demand for professionally educated 
teachers is steadily growing, and the number of state and 
city normal schools increases year by year. Teachers' 
institutes and "summer schools" are everywhere estab- 
lished. State associations of teachers are increasing in 
number and strength. The National Educational Asso- 
ciation is an acknowledged power. Educational journals 



OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 167 

are infusing a progressive spirit into the great body of 
teachers. Magazines are presenting to the people the best 
educational thought of the country. Newspapers are 
spreading information on educational matters. The com- 
paratively recent establishment of departments of peda- 
gogics in state universities and other institutions of learn- 
ing, is due to a recognition of the need of special prepara- 
tion for teachers in high schools and colleges, as well as 
for teachers in the elementary schools. 

Imperfections in the School System. — No thoughtful 
educator will claim that our school system is free from 
defects. The annual re-election or re-appointment of 
teachers still stands as a legal barrier against teaching as 
a profession. The provisions in state school laws and 
city ordinances, limiting the teachers' tenure of office to 
one year, are survivals of the age of primitive schools, 
when a schoolmaster was engaged to teach during the 
winter term of three months, and a school-mistress was 
employed during the summer term. A short term of ap- 
pointment was then a necessity. In early days, the terms 
of most civil offices were limited to one year ; but there 
is now a general tendency to lengthen them, and it is to 
be hoped that this reform will soon reach the school de- 
partments of cities and towns. There are already a few 
cities in which, by ordinance, the tenure of a teacher's 
position holds during good behavior. But in many of 
the large cities in which boards of education are elected 
by direct popular vote, the power of political bosses and 
ward politicians to order the appointment or dismissal of 
teachers, is a menace, not only to teachers, but to public 
school systems of great cities. 

Another serious defect is the over-crowded condition of 
schools in cities of rapid growth, where from fifty to sixty 



l68 HISTOR V OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

pupils, and sometimes even more, are forced upon each 
teacher in a classroom. Under such circumstances, pupils 
may learn to read and write and cipher, but even the best 
of teachers cannot train them in accordance with modern 
pedagogical methods. 

Notwithstanding some weak points, however, our free- 
school system is broader and better than any other ever 
organized in the history of the human race. The kind 
and quality of instruction will be changed to meet new 
conditions, but there is no danger that the extent of educa- 
tion will be curtailed. When times are hard or taxes high, 
the schools, like other departments of government, are 
subjected to a running fire of criticism all along the line ; 
but only timid and despairing souls will be frightened into 
the belief that the foundations of society are breaking up 
on account of over education. No prophets of evil can 
convince the American people that vice, crime, idleness, 
poverty, and social discontent are the results of free public 
schools. On the contrary, there is an abiding conviction 
that it is only by means of general education brought 
within the reach of all classes that a people can permanently 
maintain free institutions. The idea of universal educa- 
tion has fairly entered into the minds of men. 

True Economy. — Liberality in taxation for public 
schools is believed to be enlightened economy for the state. 
What might be extravagance in the individual is a wise 
expenditure by the nation. This generation is not living 
for itself alone, but for future generations and the glory of 
the republic. Complaints about school taxation have 
been heard ever since the first town tax was levied in New 
England or New York. There are always some taxpayers 
who seem to consider that the chief end of man is to 
escape taxation. But public schools are worth far more 



OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 169 

than they cost ; for they make intelHgent the great mass 
of electors whose will, expressed by the ballot, makes or 
unmakes constitutions, and enacts laws that make or mar 
the common weal. 

The better the schools are made, the more costly they 
become. The era of liberal appropriations for common 
schools, public colleges, and free state universities, is 
only beginning ; for a modern scientific and literary educa- 
tion, however costly it may be, is a good permanent in- 
vestment. Now that a free education from kindergarten 
to university has been brought within the possible reach 
of all classes, we need not fear that intelligent electors 
will surrender the power of voting all the money needed 
for maintaining the American system of free public educa- 
tion. 

The Outlook. — As the nineteenth century draws to a 
close, the educational outlook is full of promise. The 
common schools, with an enlarged and an enriched course 
of study, fairly meet the needs of the common pursuits of 
life ; state normal schools are everywhere training teachers 
for their work ; the secondary schools are extending the 
culture of the elementary schools and are fitting students 
for college ; while the free state universities and colleges 
of agriculture and the mechanic arts, constitute the crown- 
ing glory of the system. Freed from the scholastic tram- 
mels of the ancient curriculum, these new universities and 
colleges are training skilled specialists in agriculture, the 
mechanic arts, and other industrial, commercial, scientific, 
and educational pursuits, but in nowise neglecting classical 
courses and the professions of law and medicine. They 
are reacting powerfully on high schools, normal schools, 
and common schools, raising the standard of all, and bring- 
ing the entire system into harmony. 



1^0 HISTOR y OF AMERICAN PUBLIC SCHOOLS 

The corner stones of our public-school system have 
been securely laid and they will long endure. When we 
consider how the common schools have reached every 
state, city, village, hamlet, and rural district in our country, 
how they have molded successive generations into Ameri- 
can citizens who have met the demands of every crisis in 
our national affairs, we pay little heed to the lamentations 
of pessimists. We exult, rather, that we have lived to 
behold the glory and grandeur of our reunited country, 
and rejoice that our lot is cast among a people whose faith 
grows firmer and stronger in republican institutions, free 
labor, free schools, free speech, and a free press. The 
words of the prophet-poet Whittier have become true : 

" The mighty West shall bless the East, and sea shall answer sea, 
And mountain unto mountain call : Praise God for we are free." 

On the threshold of the twentieth century, as the con- 
solidated republic is entering on a new era of prosperity 
and power, let us, each and all, do our utmost to hold our 
public schools up to their highest degree of efficiency, so 
that they may meet all future needs of the new nation. 
If our public schools are kept vitalized by enlightened 
common sense, patriotism, and righteousness, universal 
suffrage will not prove a failure, and universal education 
will prove the safeguard of the republic. 

REFERENCES FOR SPECIAL STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF 

PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 

Boone's History of Education in the United States. 
George H. Martin's Evolution of the Massachusetts Pub- 
lic-School System. 
Wickersham's History of Education in Pennsylvania. 
Randall's History of the Public Schools of New York. 



OUTLOOK FOR THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 



171 



Barnard's American Journal of Education. 
Kiddle and Schem's Cyclopedia of Education. 
McMaster's History of the People of the United States. 
Motley's Dutch Republic. 

Campbell's The Puritan in Holland, England, and America. 
Reports of the United States Commissioner of Edu- 
cation : — 
A series of Historical Sketches by Dr. A. D. Mayo : 
{a) Public Schools during the Colonial Period, Report 

for 1893-94, Vol. I. 
{U) Education in the Northwest, Report for 1894-95, 
Vol. 2. 

(c) Common Schools in New York, New Jersey, and 

Pennsylvania, Report for 1895-96, Vol. i. 

(d) Common Schools in the Southern States, Report 

for 1895-96, Vol. I. 

(e) Horace Mann and the Great Revival of the Ameri- 

can Common School, 1830-50, Report of 1896- 
97, Vol. I. 



PART 11 

APPLIED PEDAGOGICS IN AMERICAN PUBLIC 

SCHOOLS 



CHAPTER I 

MANAGEMENT IN SCHOOL GOVERNMENT 

The foundation of a school, as of society, is law and 
order. Teachers must possess the power of enforcing 
such regulations as are essential to the existence of the 
school as a social organization. In school government 
much depends on making pupils feel that rules and reg- 
ulations are intended for their own good, not that they 
are made by the teacher for his own pleasure in exercis- 
ing arbitrary power. Most pupils really prefer order 
to disorder, firmness to weakness, law to lawlessness. 
Hence calisthenics and military precision in marching are 
efficient aids in securing prompt obedience to commands. 
One object of discipline is to secure a sufficient degree of 
order, quietness, and regularity to enable pupils to pursue 
their studies and recite their lessons without interruption ; 
but the higher aim is to train the will, and incite pupils 
to put forth vigorous efforts for self-control. But upon 
untrained children whose impulses are strong and whose 
habits of self-control are weak, the hand of power must 
be laid, to remind them of duty and compel them to do 
it. 

173 



174 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



Firmness. — The power to govern well is an essential 
quality of every successful teacher. When a new teacher 
takes charge of a school or a class, there is always a trial 
of strength between the ruler and the ruled ; and woe 
be to that man or woman who falls a weak prey to young 
and merciless school tyrants. At present, in school as in 
state, judicious severity is, in the end, the truest kindness. 
Fear of punishment is the only check to the lawlessness 
of some children as well as of some men. The penalties 
of crime awarded by the law of the state, are designed, 
not for the average law-abiding citizen, but for the ex- 
ceptional offender; and punishment in school is held as a 
terror only over the exceptional pupil. When all children 
are well governed at home, when all teachers are profes- 
sionally trained, when all parents are reasonable, when 
hereditary tendencies are in harmony with existing social 
conditions, all kinds of penalties in school may safely be 
abolished. 

But one of the main objects of the teacher should be 
to lead pupils to do right from a sense of duty and 
self-respect rather than from fear of punishment. As the 
school is a small social community, its members should 
be so trained in their duties to one another that they will 
learn to respect the rights of others. 

School Opinion. — The public opinion of the school is 
an important element in discipline, and the teacher with 
tact will direct this power to the side of order and right- 
doing. Many a boy is influenced by the opinions of 
his fellows more than by the decisions of his teachers. 
Few pupils can resist when they find themselves con- 
demned by the common voice of their companions, whose 
censure they dread more than that of their superiors. 
A wise teacher can win to his side the active, energetic, 



MANAGEMENT IN SCHOOL GOVERNMENT 



175 



leading pupils by putting them into places of honor, trust, 
or duty ; and, having done this, it is easy to secure their 
co-operation in establishing a wholesome and restraining 
school influence. 

Obstinate Children. — It is not good policy to drive 
strong-willed children into obstinacy. Respect the per- 
sonality and individuality of every pupil. Indeed, make 
every effort to develop positive force of character. The 
more will of the right kind in a child the better. By a 
little patience and forbearance, you may bring to bear on 
the self-willed child the influence of kindness, sympathy, 
or reason. Set your own tact against the dull, brutish 
obstinacy of the pupil. A forced submission often ends 
in sullen doggedness or a smoldering fire of rebellion. 
The child must learn obedience ; tJiat is the first and 
greatest of lessons, but with some impulsive children real 
affection for the teacher will often secure obedience when 
nothing else will avail. 

Penalties. — In order to enforce good government in 
schools, there must be penalties for violations of rules. 
These penalties may be reprimands, checks, loss of privi- 
leges, detention, suspension, or possibly in extreme cases, 
corporal punishment. Penalties must be certain, and 
must appear as the natural consequence of wrong acts. 
The child should know zvJiat he has to expect, and wJicn 
to expect it. The child soon learns to yield to the in- 
evitable. It is the certainty, not the severity, of punish- 
ment that deters pupils from violating regulations. But 
it is not wise to make cast-iron rules with unchangeable 
penalties. If you fail to enforce fixed penalties, you lose 
the respect of your pupils; and if you do enforce them, 
you may often be guilty of injustice. Give your verdict 
and pass sentence after the conviction of the offender. 



176 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



President Eliot, in the " Unity of Educational Reform," ^ remarks : 
" Down to times quite within my memory, the method of discipline, both 
in school and college, was extremely simple ; for it rehed chiefly, first, 
on a highly stimulated emulation and fear of penalty. . . It is now an 
accepted doctrine that the discipline of childhood should not be so dif- 
ferent from that of adolescence as to cause at any point of the way a full 
stop and a fresh start. . . . Among the permanent motives which act 
all through life are prudence, caution, emulation, love of approbation, 
shame, pride, self-respect, pleasure in discovery, activity, or achieve- 
ment, delight in beauty, strength, grace, and grandeur, and the love 
of power, and of possessions as giving power." 

Liberty. — It is an essential principle of school govern- 
ment that every pupil be allowed the largest liberty- 
possible without infringing on the rights, interests, duties, 
or convenience of others. Hence the right administration 
of school afTairs is not always an easy task. It is easy 
enough to sit in judgment on the cases that are pure black 
or pure white, but the gray cases are complex, requiring 
the utmost caution and deliberation. 

Trust. — Regard your pupils as truthful until you have 
positive evidence to the contrary. Children with a high 
sense of honor will never forgive you for doubting their 
word, or for making an unjust accusation. Trust your 
pupils if you want them to put their trust in you. 

Truthfulness. — Encourage truthfulness by rewarding 
full and frank confession with a remission of penalties, 
so far as is consistent with school discipline. Undue 
severity excites fear, and fear seeks an easy refuge in cun- 
ning and evasion. There is a conventional sense of honor 
among schoolboys which binds them not to inform the 
teacher of the misdeeds of their fellows. They are un- 
wise teachers who take ground against this school opin- 
ion, and endeavor, by threats of punishment, to compel 

1" Educational Reform " (1898). 



MANA GEMENT IN SCHO OL GO VERNMENT 1 77 

pupils to become informers. It is wisdom for teachers to 
use tact in so modifying the school code as to draw a line 
of distinction between minor matters that belong to the 
tattling order, and the graver offenses that concern the 
real welfare of the school. 

Order. — It is wise to make but few rules and not to 
indulge in much talk about infringements of them. Put 
yourself in the place of your pupils. Recall your own 
school experiences, your hopes and fears, your impulses, 
your notions, and the motives that influenced you. 

Professor Hinsdale, in " Studies in Education," says : " Reasonable 
order in the schoolroom, for the most part, must be secured indirectly ; 
it must come as the result of keen interest in the work, and close 
application to it. What is sometimes called ' good order * does not 
always imply either interest in studies or a good school, since it may 
be secured by extreme repression ; but interest and application are 
pretty certain to lead to good order. In other words, order should be 
largely spontaneous. In the long run, that teacher will best succeed 
in securing it who says little about it. Even grown persons who are 
consciously trying to keep still, find it difficult to do so. How hard 
many find it to sit for a photograph ! The boy whose business it is 
to be quiet is likely to make a great deal of noise while about it. 
Moreover, a positive direction of order to keep still, given to any 
assemblage, tends to provoke nervous and muscular movements. 
Great audiences are as still as death, not when the orator is descanting 
on order and stillness, but when he loses himself and them in his 
subject. Hence attempts to secure order should not be thrust into the 
faces of children." 

Barbarism. — It is educational barbarism to inflict per- 
sonal indignities, such as pulling the hair, boxing the ears, 
or slapping the face. Such brutalities excite the bitterest 
resentment, and are seldom forgiven. 

Punishment. — One of the most effective penalties is to 
deprive offenders of some privilege, or to cut them off 
from the society of schoolmates at recess or intermission. 

AM. PUB. SCH. — 12 



1^8 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

Secure order, if possible, without corporal punishment ; 
but secure obedience at all hazards. For in school, as in 
an army, discipline is essential to existence. Corporal 
punishment is now generally regarded only as a final resort 
when all other means fail to secure obedience. In many 
cities suspension has superseded corporal punishment even 
as a final resort. It will be well for teachers to be guided 
in some measure by the public opinion of the community 
in which they teach. 

Dr. G. Stanley Hall, the kindest and most genial of re- 
formers, said in a recent lecture in Chicago (1889): '* I 
believe in corporal punishment in the schools. It should 
not be carried to excess, but the fact that an incorrigible 
boy knows that the teacher may whip him is a tremendous 
support to the teacher." 



CHAPTER II 
SUGGESTIONS ON CLASS-ROOM MANAGEMENT 

Cheerfulness. — Cultivate a habit of cheerfulness that 
shall shine out from your countenance like the light of 
the rising sun. ''A teacher has only partially compre- 
hended the familiar powers of his place," says Bishop 
Huntington, " who has left out the lessons of his own 
countenance. There is a perpetual picture which his 
pupils study as unconsciously as he exhibits it. His 
plans will miscarry if he expects a genial and nourishing 
session when he enters with a face blacker than the 
blackboard." 

Scolding. — The less you threaten, the less you find 
fault, the less you scold, the more friends you will have 
among the boys and girls, and the better will be your 
school. Unless you wish to be hated, beware of sarcasm 
and ridicule. A cutting remark is never forgotten and 
seldom forgiven. 

Courtesy. — Consent cordially and gracefully, but let 
your refusals be firm and absolute. Be courteous and 
polite; it is easier to win children by kindness than to 
drive them by authority. 

Self-help. — Beyond imparting a small stock of specific 
knowledge, the chief work of the teacher is to teach pupils 
the right way of finding out things for themselves, just as 
little children are taught to walk in order that they may 
go alone. It is only the poorest teachers and the un- 
trained ones that do all the hard work for their pupils. 

179 



I So APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

Agassiz said that the worst service a teacher could render 
to a pupil was to give him a ready-made answer. The 
best teachers are those whose pupils are made daily more 
and more able to pursue their studies without the aid of 
teachers. 

Praise. — Make use of the stimulus of praise ; but use it 
sparingly, so that it may be of value when bestowed. 
Given with good judgment, commendation is a powerful 
agency, but prizes and distinctions often produce the 
worst effect in school. Generous emulation is good, but 
the selfish pride of rivalry is bad. 

Manner. — In conducting a recitation, look your pupils 
in the eye when you question them, and make them look 
you in the eye when they answer. Keep your voice down 
to the conversational key. A quiet voice is music in the 
schoolroom. Lighten up your class with a pleasant coun- 
tenance. The teacher who cannot occasionally join in a 
hearty laugh with pupils lacks one important element of 
power. Have something interesting to say to your pupils 
at every recitation. If you can keep them interested you 
will have but little trouble about order. Keep them on 
the alert by being wide-awake yourself. . 

Question and Answer. — In general, put questions to 
the whole class, in order to make every pupil think out 
the answer; then, after a pause, call upon some one pupil 
to give it. Seldom repeat a question. Train pupils to a 
habit of close attention, so that they will understand what 
you say the first time you say it. Give slow children 
time to think and speak. The readiest children are not 
always the soundest thinkers. The highest praise given 
by an English inspector to a teacher was '^ that he allowed 
his slow boys time to wriggle out an ansivcrT It is a bad 
habit for the teacher to repeat to the class a pupil's half- 



SUGGESTIONS ON CLASS-ROOM MANAGEMENT i8i 

audible answer. Require every pupil to speak loud 
enough to be distinctly understood by every member of 
the class. Do not expect pupils to know as much as you 
do, neither consider them dull because they fail to per- 
ceive things that seem to you to be simple and easy. 
Keep in mind the aphorism of Arnold Tompkins : 
** Teaching is the process by which one mind, from a set 
purpose, produces the life-tinfolding process in another.'' 

Explaining. — Explain when necessary, but make your 
pupils do a part of the talking. Your talk should consist 
largely of intelligent questions. Encourage pupils to ask 
questions, but do not answer them yourself until after you 
have given the class an opportunity to answer. 

Good English. — Train pupils to recite in good English, 
but do not worry them by interruptions when they are 
speaking. Make a note of incorrect or inelegant expres- 
sions and have them corrected afterwards. The correct 
use of language is a matter of habit rather than a result 
of studying the rules of grammar. It will be one of the 
arduous duties of every teacher, whether in high or low 
grade classes, to correct inaccuracies of speech. The 
teacher should use plain and pure English, and require 
pupils to do the same. No provincialisms, no slang, no 
careless or slovenly pronunciation should be allowed to 
pass unnoticed. Questions should be direct ; answers 
concise. But do not expect children to speak perfect 
English, and do not become too critical about their ex- 
pressions. 

Habits of Study. — The text-book is designed as an aid 
both to pupils and teacher ; but the teacher should show 
pupils how to study their lessons by calling their atten- 
tion to leading points, by vitalizing printed words with 
the living voice, and by showing children not only zuhat 



1 82 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

to study, but, also, how to study. It is a good plan to 
require short intervals of study in school hours. In 
graded schools at least ten minutes of the half hour al 
lowed for recitation may often be devoted to silent study 
by pupils. The common practice of detaining pupils 
after school to study imperfectly recited lessons is un- 
psychological. It is a physical impossibility for a tired, 
hungry, impatient child to do good thinking under such 
conditions. " No learning," says Socrates, as translated 
by Roger Ascham, " ought to be learned with bondage ; 
for bodily labors wrought by compulsion hurt not the 
body ; but any learning learned by compulsion tarrieth 
not long in the mind." 

Home Study. — No lessons whatever, except perhaps 
a reading lesson, should be assigned for home study to 
children below the fourth grade. In general, only les- 
sons which require mainly an exercise of memory should 
be assigned for home work. Many pupils have no con- 
veniences for writing at home, and few have a quiet room 
to themselves. The giving out of long and difificult prob- 
lems in arithmetic to be worked at home is an unmiti- 
gated evil. The lessons most suitable for home study 
seem to be reading, geography, spelling, grammar, history, 
and observation lessons in nature study. 

Mental Habits. — In whatever grades you are teaching 
train pupils, as far as practicable, to the habit of listening 
attentively to what you tell them ; of giving back to you, 
in their own words, the substance of your instruction ; of 
observing carefully in nature-study or science ; and of re- 
cording correctly. These are important things in all 
grades. 

" We must learn," says President Eliot in " Educational Reform " 
" to see straight and clear; to compare and infer; to make an accurate 



SUGGESTIONS ON CLASS-ROOM MANAGEMENT 



183 



record ; to remember ; to express our thought with precision ; and to 
hold fast lofty ideals. . . . The child of five years should begin to think 
clearly and justly, and he should begin to know what love and duty 
mean ; and the mature man of twenty-tive should still be training his 
powers of observing, comparing, recording, and expressing. The aims 
and the fundamental methods at all stages of education should, there- 
fore, be essentially the same, because the essential constituents of 
education are the same at all stages. The grammar-school pupil is try- 
ing to do the same kinds of things which the high-school pupil is trying 
to do, though, of course, with less developed powers. The high-school 
pupil has the same intellectual needs which the university student 
feels. From first to last, it is the teacher's most important function to 
make the pupil think accurately and express his thoughts with preci- 
sion and force ; and in this respect the function of the primary-school 
teacher is not different in essence from that of the teacher of law 
medicine, theology, or engineering." 

Reviews. — Frequent reviews are essential to good 

training. However well anything is learned for the time 

being, it will pass into oblivion if not called up again and 

again. Repetition is absolutely essential to habit, skill, 

readiness, thoroughness, and accuracy. But reviews 

should not, in general, consist in the assignment of five or 

ten pages of the text-book for home study. 

" The best form of review," says McMurry,^ " is that which springs 
out of comparisons, which finds in the new lessons amplifications of old 
principles, which makes every lesson a review of old knowledge in 
thelight of new experience. Incidental reviews and comparisons, by 
which every new topic is incorporated into the body of our previous 
experiences are the rational form of study. It is constantly making 
over, modifying, and expanding the old thought material. The stated 
periodical review presupposes a static condition in knowledge ; such 
knowledge, when finally salted down, partakes of the nature of a petri- 
faction and lacks that fluidity and pervasiveness which make it pene- 
trate and permeate every nook and avenue of experience." 

Child Study. — Above all make a careful study of your 
1 McMurry's " Method of the Recitation " (1897). 



1 84 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

pupils, of their personal characteristics, of their varied de- 
grees of capacity, so that you can treat them fairly and 
intelligently. The best psychological methods of teaching 
are found out by careful study of the spontaneous activi- 
ties and natural tendencies of children. '' I cannot but 
think," says William James, " that to apperceive your 
pupil as a little sensitive, impulsive, associative, and reac- 
tive organism, partly fated and partly free, will lead to a 
better intelligence of all his ways." 

Professor Earl Barnes closes an able paper on " Methods of Study- 
ing Children " with the following summary : *' Undoubtedly, the best 
student of the natural history of child-life is he who uses all methods 
in due proportion. If a man goes about his daily work with his eyes 
and his heart open ; if he lives over his own childhood's life, with an 
honest desire to see what kind of a child he was, and what kind of a 
man he is, quickening his memory with childish records and autobi- 
ography ; if he studies children under carefully arranged conditions, 
bringing the same fair-mindedness and persistence to his work that 
the scientist brings to his laboratory ; and if he brings all these 
scattered studies into their due relations, by setting them in a back- 
ground of general law, based on large quantitative studies, he will 
accomplish all that he can reasonably hope for in these days of begin- 
nings." 

New Methods. — Stand ready to give a fair considera- 
tion to new methods in teaching, even if they differ from ' 
your preconceived ideas. *'The only way in which a 
human being can make some approach to knowing the 
whole of a subject," says John Stuart Mill, ** is by hearing 
what can be said about it by persons of every variety of 
opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked 
at by every character of mind. No wise man ever ac- 
quired his wisdom in any mode but this ; nor is it in the 
nature of human intellect to become wise in any other 
manner." 



SUGGESTIONS ON CLASS-ROOM MANAGEMENT 185 

" I have never yet seen in any college or university," 
says President Eliot, *' a method of instruction which was 
too good for an elementary school or a secondary school. 
The alert, inspiring, winning, commanding teacher is just 
the same rare and admirable person in school and college. 
When it is a question how best to teach a given subject, 
the chances are that college or scientific-school teachers of 
that subject can help school teachers, and that school 
teachers can help college teachers. Moreover, it is im- 
portant that each should know what the other does." ^ 

Individuality. — It is desirable in large schools that 
there should be some general unity of method, but teach- 
ers ought not to be reduced to the dead level of Chinese 
uniformity. The life of all good teaching is the individ- 
uality of the class teacher. Principals should allow as- 
sistants the same liberty that they ask for themselves. 
The general tendency of large graded schools is to weaken 
the individuality of both teacher and pupil. Uniformity 
in essentials, diversity in particulars, should be the rule. 
Without some degree of freedom, there can be neither 
interest nor enthusiasm. Slaves never become enthusiastic 
except in a struggle for liberty. 

Grade Promotions. — A quarter of a century ago there 
prevailed in most of the cities of our country an epidemic 
of ofificial written examinations at the end of the year, 
which determined the promotion of pupils from grade to 
grade. These examinations belonged to the class termed 
by Huxley " the Abomination of Desolation." The 
result was disastrous both to teachers and pupils. Finally, 
the evils of this method became unbearable, and there 
was a general revolt against it. The '' lock-step " of 
graded schools was broken. In many cities, pupils are 

1 "Educational Reform " (1898). 



1 86 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

now promoted from grade to grade, or section to section, 
by the school principal and the class teacher, semi-annually 
or annually, by class records and the judgment of teachers. 
In the best schools pupils are changed from section to 
section whenever they become fitted for it. 

In an address on " Problems in Graded School Management," Dr. 
Emerson E. White, of Ohio, makes the following statements : "There 
is a growing conviction among the more intelligent observers of our 
graded system of schools, that there are serious defects either in the 
system itself or in the administration. . . . But whatever may be true 
of the necessity or value of test examinations, they are very generally 
employed in graded schools, and their character largely determines 
the character of school instruction. If the examination tests are 
narrow and technical, the instruction will be narrow and technical ; if 
the tests run to figures, the instruction will run to figures ; if the tests 
demand details, they will ' emphasize and make imperative all the 
lumber of the text-books.' . . . Instead of half-time schools, I would 
suggest a half-time course of study in all grades above the primary. 
It is not necessary to require all the pupils to take the same number 
of studies and advance with even step through the course. This pro- 
crustean device must be given up if the public school system is to do 
its full legitimate work as an agency for the education of the whole 
people. Instead of excluding pupils who cannot meet all the conditions 
of a complete and thorough course of elementary education, it must 
provide for such pupils the best education possible under the circum- 
stances." 1 

Written Examinations. — In all schools there must be 
occasional written examinations. Kept within reasonable 
limits, they are productive of great good, provided the 
questions are properly prepared. Here again I am con- 
strained to quote the tersely put statements of President 
Eliot : " Tests of faithfulness and of mental condition are 
also necessary at stated periods ; but these tests should 

1 Republished in the Report of the Commissioner of Education, 
Vol. 2, 1896-97. 



SUGGESTIONS ON CLASS-ROOM MANAGEMENT i^y 

be directed to ascertain what the pupils can do, rather 
than what they know. There must be examinations, an- 
ticipated and unanticipated. Let them always be con- 
ducted by the teacher, for the teacher, and as helps and 
guides in teaching and learning." 

This question of per cent, is nowhere set forth more 
clearly than by Arnold Tompkins, when he says : '* It 
must be remembered that nothing lies like figures when 
used to indicate mental attainments ; especially so when 
per cents, are used as motives to study, and become an 
object of attainment by the teacher." 

School Program. — For a full discussion of the rel- 
ative time to be given to the different studies, and for the 
arrangement of a program, teachers are referred to the 
"Report of the Committee of Fifteen " (1895), and the 
" Report of the Committee of Twelve " (1897). 

The Chief End. — Under all the mechanism of graded 
schools, and programs, and courses of study, teachers 
must not lose sight of the fact that the chief end of the 
school and the teacher is to bring about in some way the 
best possible development for each particular pupil. Now 
the children are variable factors. They neither look alike 
nor think alike. They have inherited different powers 
of mind and tendencies of temperament. School ma- 
chinery, however elaborate and systematic, and beautiful, 
must not be allowed to crush out all individuality in the 
child. Each pupil is of more consequence than the 
system. Child study means a recognition of differences 
in pupils. In spite of numbers and automatic appliances, 
it is the fine art of the true teacher to kindle each little 
soul into high ideals with some spark of enthusiasm from 
her own. 



CHAPTER III 

RECITATIONS AND THE ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS 

Objects of the Recitation. — The objects of the reci- 
tation are to induce study, to test preparation, to awaken 
inquiry, to cultivate expression and attention, and to en- 
able the teacher to give necessary explanation and instruc- 
tion. But the main purpose should be, not so much " to 
hear the lesson," as to instruct the pupil. According to 
Herbart, the formal steps should be : 

1. The preparation, which consists in connecting the 
preceding lesson with the one in hand. 

2. The making clear the new material to the compre- 
hension of the pupil. 

3. The apperception or assimilation of new ideas with 
old ideas by association, to make sure the whole lesson is 
understood. 

Credits and Checks. — Waste as little time as possible 
in keeping a daily account of recitation credits. No 
teacher can do his best at instructing when his attention 
is diverted by jotting down credits. The strong tendency 
in graded schools to run into excessive dependence upon 
questions and text-book answers springs largely from the 
undue importance attached to credits and rank. Many 
sensitive pupils are kept in a constant worry on accpunt 
of " checks " in recitations. A ''check" is not quite so 
brutal as a blow ; but the depressing effect of its endless 
dropping is often quite as bad upon the disposition. Be- 
sides, if all the half hour of recitation is spent in putting 

188 



RECITATIONS AND ART OF USING TEXTBOOKS 189 

a question to each pupil in order to "■ mark " him, there 
is little time left for teaching. The most vital work done 
in a class cannot be reduced to percentage. Recitation rec- 
ords may be kept ; but it is by no means desirable that 
every recitation should be recorded. Frequently the 
recitation of an assigned lesson should be brief, the prin- 
cipal part of the time being devoted to explanations and 
illustrations by the teacher. 

The Oral Method. — Pupils attend school, not merely 
to recite, but also to be instructed and aided by the living 
teacher. Do not stop short with hearing a lesson ; add 
something to it ; discuss it ; show its connection with pre- 
ceding lessons and its relation to the next advance lesson, 
and thus excite some interest on the part of pupils. In 
doing this, there is no need of going to the extreme of 
not requiring pupils to recite set lessons in set terms, pro- 
vided that you are satisfied that ideas are associated with 
the words repeated. *' The older pedagogic method of 
learning things by rote," says Dr. William James, '* and 
reciting them parrot-like in the schoolroom, rested on the 
truth that a thing merely read or heard, and never ver- 
bally reproduced, contracts the weakest possible adhesion 
in the mind. Verbal recitation or reproduction is thus a 
highly important kind of reactive behavior on our impres- 
sions, and it is to be feared that in the reaction against the 
old parrot recitations as the beginning and end of instruc- 
tion, the extreme value of verbal recitation as an element 
of complete training may be nowadays too much for-, 
gotten." 

Text-books. — In the primitive common school the 
chief duty of the pupil was to memorize text-book les- 
sons, and the main office of the teacher was to ask the 
text-book questions without note, comment, or explana- 



IQO APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

tion. While this custom has been materially modified by 
modern methods, undue dependence upon the text-book 
is still a marked characteristic of the schools in our 
country. 

In an official report on the public-school system of the 
United States by a distinguished German educator, Dr. 
E. Schlee, who attended in an official capacity the World's 
Fair at Chicago and the Congress of Education, there is 
found the following paragraph on " Methods and Text- 
Books " : ^ 

" The American method of instruction, having taken the French and 
English mechanical memorizing for its model, differs essentially from 
the German. It aims, not at comprehending and mastering a subject 
through understanding, but at the acquisition of a complete presenta- 
tion through the memory. Consequently, instruction is defined less by 
the teacher than by the text-book ; which is learned almost by heart. 
Most of the time is taken up by daily questions and answers, and 
marks are given for the recitation. The book contains a number of 
questions with answers attached for recitation. Examinations for 
promotion in class, as well as teachers' examinations, consist, for the 
most part, of a number of questions and answers, so that with diligent 
application and a good memory even an inferior mind can easily pass 
them. Be the books never so good, such instruction will hardly lead 
to the development of the intellect and to a free mastery of the subject. 
The stacks of pupils' work at the exposition in Chicago contained ex- 
cellent work in geography and the natural sciences, especially physiol- 
ogy ; the explanatory drawings were particularly good and appro- 
priate, but the finished form and at times the almost identical word- 
ing, betrayed that they were chapters from the text-book committed to 
memory. American teachers are by no means ignorant of this defi- 
ciency in their method. Many objections have been urged, but the 
method is a natural growth of the whole school system. In cases 
where schools or a few teachers have adopted the German method 
they and their pupils appear at a disadvantage at inspections and ex- 
aminations arranged according to the text-book system." 

^ Report of Commissioner of Education, 1892-93. 



RECITATIONS AND ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS igi 

Use of Text-Books. — One of the things which young 
teachers must acquire by experience and practice is the 
fine art of making a wise use of school text-books by fit- 
ting the printed lessons to the minds of pupils by means 
of inductive development exercises and explanations. For 
the author of a school arithmetic, or grammar, or geog- 
raphy, intended for use in grades other than the primary, 
is subject to rigid limitations. His book must treat of 
the conventional topics found in other books on the same 
subjects, else it will be rejected by publishers and school 
boards. It must be limited to a certain number of pages 
in order to compete in price with similar books. There is 
no room for inductive exercises, and the author reluc- 
tantly falls back on the deductive or formal method of 
definition, general statement, rule, exercises, and problems. 
The easy inductive steps must, of necessity, be supplied 
by the development lessons of the teacher. 

Illustration in Arithmetic. — Before me lies a copy of 
the Advanced Arithmetic (1887), officially adopted for 
use in the common schools of the state of California. It 
is edited, published, and sold by the state. In using this 
text-book according to the average courses of study, 
pupils go through " the four rules," and begin their first 
lessons in written common fractions, in the fifth or 
sixth grade. The subject is presented in a deductive 
manner admirably adapted to a mathematician of the old 
colonial type. It begins with a philosophical definition 
as follows : " A fraction is an indicated division. Thus, 
the indicated division of the remainder in division is a 
fraction." This is immediately followed by other defini- 
tions, such as : numerator, denominator, integer, mixed 
number, and improper fraction. Next, these definitions 
are applied in twenty-one '' Exercises " in which the frac- 



192 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



tions given are to be classified in columns on the slate ac- 
cording to the preceding definitions. The following are 
tvoical *' exercises " • " (6^ J-^-^ isg . " <' fi ^\ 4o_i 375 209 " 

typiLcU CXCILIbCb . V^J12 0'Y2T» VM; 130' 390' 220- 

Now human ingenuity could hardly devise a more un- 
psychological beginning. It is evident that teachers must 
precede this deductive treatment by a series of inductive 
questions, explanations, and genetic exercises, which shall 
prepare the minds of pupils to assimilate this crude mass 
of fractions with what little knowledge of real business 
fractions they have managed to pick up outside of school 
and then substitute in place of the " exercises," exam- 
ples that will be in accord with both common-sense and 
modern psychology. 

In a few lessons after this formidable introduction to 
fractions, in due ** logical order," pupils reach a topic 
headed " inverting the divisor." An example is given in 
division of fractions, with an analytical or algebraical ex- 
planation of the reason for inverting the divisor. This 
brings to mind my own experience as a teacher half a 
century ago in a district school in New England. At the 
close of the winter term the examining committee made 
their appearance — one of them being the master of the 
town high school, who examined my arithmetic class of 
three boys by asking only one question, to wit : " Give an 
explanation of the reason for inverting the divisor." 

This lesson on ^' inverting the divisor " is immediately 
succeeded by an appalling exercise on " complex frac- 
tions," piled up in pyramids of confusion. Is it not the 
imperative duty of the young teacher to cut loose from 
this dry, pedantic, mathematical formalism and take up 
the subject in some natural method of development? 

Finally, the pupils reach *' decimal fractions," in- 
troduced by a " diagram " and thirty-two " exercises," 



RECITATIONS AND ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS 193 

to be read and written. The following are fair samples 
of these exercises : "(5)7.007; (6) .13147 ; (19) 171.4112; 
(29) 293.0293." What possible use can teachers, possessed 
of plain common sense, make of a text-book lesson like 
this for a class of beginners ? 

How one class encountered this formidable deductive lesson, I know 
from observation. On entering an evening school in San Francisco, I 
found an anxious-looking young lady in charge of a sixth grade class 
of boys. She said to me, with a weary air : " We are taking our first 
lessons in decimals this evening, and the bovs don't seem to understand 
it." " What is the lesson } " I asked. She showed me the book open 
at the " diagram and 32 exercises " mentioned abo\e. Taking charge 
of the class, I sent half the boys to the board, let the others take paper 
and pencil, and dictated a column of dollars and cents to be added. 
The work was well done because the question was a business one and 
these were business boys. Then I asked them such questions as the 
following : How many cents in a dollar ? What part of a dollar is one 
cent ? ; 25 cents ? ; 75 cents .'' etc. Next they read, from the columns 
on the board, each item as dollars and hundredths of a dollar ; then, 
they erased the sign of dollars, and read each item as a whole number 
and hundredths. Finally, with $1.12^ cents written on the board, 
and a few inductive questions, the class understood the reading and 
writing of decimals to thousandths, and there the lesson ended. 

Take still another illustration. After a year devoted 
to common fractions, the growing boy at last reaches on 
page 105 of his book, a half page on " Dollars and Cents 
Written Decimally," containing " 16 exercises to be read," 
such as '* $25.50," etc. Now it was believed in colonial 
times that in " logical " sequence decimal fractions could 
not be learned until all the complications of common 
fractions had been mastered. Consequently, in all parts 
of this book previous to page 105, $25.50 is expressed as 
-$25i;" $2.35 as -$2^;" $1.75 as '^ $if ," etc. This 
form of expression is awkward, but it was assumed as a 
'' logical necessity." Immediately after this half page of 

AM. PUB. SCH. 13 



ig^ APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

dollars and cents, the pupil is confronted by a half page 
on " circulating decimals." What is the evident duty of 
the teacher? Because Nicholas Pike, a century ago, 
placed his two pages on " Federal Currency " in a certain 
place in his arithmetic, must that " logical order " remain 
forever unchanged ? When the children in all the schools 
of France learn decimals and whole numbers from the 
beginning, and carry both along together naturally and 
easily, shall American boys and girls, who use the Metric 
System as far as currency is concerned, postpone the 
writing of dollars and cents until long past the middle of 
their school course ? 

Turn to Grammar. — In teaching etymology, in what- 
ever grade the subject is begun, teachers should connect, 
by means of inductive exercises, whatever knowledge 
children have acquired in the use of their mother tongue 
with the new terms which are presented in the text-book 
lesson. For instance, before assigning a lesson on 
" tense," the teacher should call the attention of pupils 
to the fact that they have been using correctly for years, 
most of the verb forms to express present, past, and 
future time. By suitable questions, without using tech- 
nical terms, pupils should be led to make up sentences to 
show these distinctions of time. They^may then regard 
the assigned lesson with some little degree of interest. If 
pains were taken to explain the real purpose of learning 
the conjugation of a verb, and pupils were asked to make 
use of each verb-form in a full sentence for the purpose 
of expressing a thought, the possible use of studying 
"" conjugation " from the book might begin to dawn upon 
them. In a modern text-book on my table, a lesson on 
*' conjugation " begins with a definition of the term, fol- 
lowed by definitions of regular and irregular verbs, and of 



RECITATIONS AND ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS 



195 



the term *' principal parts." Without further waste of 
words, the author proceeds at once to present " a conjuga- 
tion of the verb to be auxiliary of the passive voice, and 
of the progressive form." This is immediately followed 
by a " paradigm of the regular verb : To love'' 

What course shall teachers pursue to lighten up this 
lesson full of terms new to pupils, and apparently entirely 
destitute of interest to them because of their utter in- 
ability to comprehend its use? A little preparatory 
thought may enable many teachers to discover some way 
of interesting the class. Some modern book on language 
lessons and grammar to which teachers can turn will pre- 
sent inductive approaches to this topic. Almost any way 
is better than the mere memorizing of the *' paradigm " 
without perceiving its application to the use of language. 

The Development Method. — '' The developing plan of 
teaching," says McMurry, " is one radically different from 
the lecture and the text-book methods. The teacher 
who employs it lectures or tells comparatively little to 
her class, although it is important to remember that she 
does tell some things outright ; neither does she allow 
the facts that are to be learned to be first presented 
through a text-book ; she prefers to develop them by con- 
versation with the pupils. . . . Conversation for the sake 
of developing facts should be prominent in all school in- 
struction, and since text-books, if used to introduce the 
topics, would often deprive this conversation of its point' 
their perusal should in such cases follow rather than pre- 
cede the discussion itself. One trouble with many people 
is that they began text-books so early in school and fol- 
lowed them so closely that they have never learned to 
distinguish their own thoughts and opinions from those 
of the books ; in fact, they are scarcely aware that they 



196 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



have opinions of their own. The present common use of 
text-books in school results too often in slavery to books 
or loss of independence in thought, rather than in a mas- 
tery of books and ability to use them properly." 

But it is possible to carry the development method to 
extremes, and teachers must endeavor to keep an even 
balance of judgment. Pupils must not be left to find out 
everything for themselves because much effort might be 
wasted. 

Interest and Attention. — Most of us retain pleasant 
memories of some gifted teacher who had the power of 
interesting us in our work and thus stimulating us to do 
our best. This power of interesting pupils in their school 
work is partly a gift of nature, and partly the result of 
skill acquired by practice in accord with the principles of 
educational psychology. Few teachers now rely mainly 
on the compulsory memorizing of text-book lessons 
learned without interest on the part of pupils and im- 
perfectly comprehended, or not understood at all. The 
chief aim of modern teachers, whether in primary grade 
or grammar grade, high school or college class, is to in- 
terest pupils in the subject-matter, and so lead them to 
the self-development of their own powers. 

As to detailed Avays of interesting pupils, there are 
many good modern treatises on applied psychology and 
pedagogics to which teachers can turn for suggestions. 
From one of the leaders in educational psychology, Pro- 
fessor William James, I quote one paragraph, with the 
hope that teachers will seek for more from the same 
source : ^ " Any object not interesting in itself may be- 
come interesting through becoming associated with an 

' Atlantic Monthly, April, 1889. " Talks to Teachers on Psychol- 



ogy. 



RECITATIONS AND ART OF USING TEXT-BOOKS igj 

object in which an interest ah'eady exists. The two asso- 
ciated objects grow, as it were, together; the interesting 
portion sheds its quality over the whole ; and thus, things 
not interesting in their own right borrow an interest 
which becomes as real and as strong as that of any na- 
tively interesting thing. . . . From all these facts there 
emerges a very simple abstract program for the teacher 
to follow in keeping the attention of the child : Begin 
with the line of his native interests, and offer him objects 
that have some immediate connection with these.'' 

General Principles. — In the general management of 
the recitation the difference between the skilled teacher 
and the untrained teacher is constantly made apparent. 
The unskilled teacher assumes that children are educated 
mainly by what they are told, or by what they commit to 
memory from books. His fetich is the school text-book, 
and he makes his pupils bow down before it. To him the 
child has but one intellectual faculty, and that is memory. 

Mill says, that if there is a first principle in education, 
it is this : *' That the discipline which does good to the 
mind, is that in which the mind is active, not passive; the 
secret of developing the faculties is to give them much to 
do, and much inducement to do it." Tyndall says, '' The 
exercise of the mind, like that of the body, depends for 
its value upon the spirit in which it is accomplished." 
Spencer says, " The child should be told as little as pos- 
sible and induced to discover as much as possible." 
All modern educators agree that in every branch of 
study the mind should be conducted from the simple 
to the complex ; the concrete to the abstract ; the indef- 
inite to the definite ; the empirical to the rational or scien- 
tific. But the unpsychological teacher violates all these 
first principles. In arithmetic, he begins with definitions 



iqS Applied pedagogics 

and mechanical rules, and ends in puzzling problems. In 
grammar, he omits the actual use of language in express- 
ing thought, and devotes his attention to the technicalities 
of parsing, analysis, and diagrams. In geography, he is 
content to have his pupils memorize names, regardless of 
associated ideas. In history, he strings dates, like wooden 
beads, upon the thread of memory. In reading, he trains 
pupils to call words without reference to thought. In 
botany, he takes books before plants, and in physics, omits 
experiments. In fact, he neither awakens curiosity, nor 
excites inquiry. 

While the art of conducting the recitation must be ac- 
quired, in part, by actual practice in teaching, it is a great 
gain for young teachers to begin with high ideal aims, 
presented by masters in this art. A careful study of ^' The 
Method of the Recitation" (1897), by the two brothers, 
Charles A. and Frank M. McMurry, cannot fail to lead 
any teacher, young or old, experienced or inexperienced, 
into new lines of thought, which will result in higher ideals 
of instruction. This book is the clearest and most prac- 
tical presentation of the subject that has been made, as 
yet, in this country. The authors make in their preface 
the following statements : 

" The Method of the Recitation is based upon the principles of 
teaching which were expounded and illustrated in the works of Herbart, 
Rein, and Ziller, At the same time, the authors hope to have shown 
in the body of the work that we have to do here with principles rec- 
ognized by teachers in every land, and that there is no thoughtless 
imitation of foreign methods and devices. While our debt to German 
thinkers for an organization of fundamental ideas is great, the entire 
discussion, as here presented, springs out of American conditions ; its 
illustrative materials are drawn exclusively from lessons commonly 
taught in our schools. In fact, the whole book, while strongly influ- 
enced by Herbart's principles, is the outgrowth of several years' con- 
tinuous work with classes of children in all the grades of the common 
school." 



CHAPTER IV 

PROFESSIONAL READING AND STUDY 

Before teaching can take rank as a profession, teachers 
must command respect for their scholarship. Most teach- 
ers can make their culture liberal if they rightly use the 
leisure time which their occupation gives them ; and those 
who get out of the sphere of imitation into that of inven- 
tion and discovery, will find ample scope for their powers. 

Teaching as an Art. — Though the desirability of pro- 
fessional training in the art of teaching is now generally 
conceded, the greatest waste of time and money in our 
school system comes from the employment of untrained 
teachers, who, in time, learn how to teach, but who do so 
at the expense of their pupils. This waste will continue 
until there is a general recognition of the need of profes- 
sionally trained teachers. There are, it is true, many men 
and women who make teaching their life-work ; but they 
have little or no legal recognition as professional teachers. 
No state law, as yet, requires any professional training 
whatever as a prerequisite for teaching, the only require- 
ment being an examination in certain conventional 
branches. The legal status of the teacher is strictly in 
accordance with the popular fallacy that anybody who can 
get a certificate is fit to " keep school." Why should not 
a state normal school diploma be taken as prima facie 
evidence of fitness to teach ? Why should not the life 
diploma of one state be legally recognized in other states ? 

Is there any good and sufficient reason why each state, 

199 



200 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

or county, or city, should be hemmed in by an ancient 
Chinese wall of educational exclusiveness ? Must all 
teachers, when they change their residence, be compelled 
to halt at every state line, or city limit, or town boundary, 
and submit to an examination, in order to prove that they 
are not educational tramps ? 

President Andrew S. Draper, of the State University of Illinois, 
tersely sums up this question as follows : ^ " Teaching in the common 
schools of the country cannot be advanced to the standing of a pro- 
fessional employment, so as to justify its classification with the learned 
professions until the conditions which obtain in many of our states are 
materially modified. It is absurd to think of reaching that consumma- 
tion so long as competency is placed in ruinous and destructive com- 
petition with incompetency, so long as the best qualifications are scarce- 
ly able to earn a living or maintain independent self-respect, while 
boys and girls not yet mature, physically or mentally, and older persons 
who are unable to succeed in other vocations are permitted to secure 
better pay for alleged teaching in the schools than they can obtain in 
any other way. . . . Without a scholarship which is at home in any 
intellectual center, without special training which can readily prove its 
utility, and force the necessity of its recognition, without public dis- 
crimination between professionals and amateurs, without an entire 
cessation of indiscriminate licensing, without putting the school doors 
in the charge of professionals, without an entire elimination of favorit- 
ism — there can be no teaching profession. If I were to withhold an- 
other word you would draw an inference which I should regret. As 
exacting as these conditions are, it is by no means impossible to 
comply with them. The signs of the times are auspicious. There is 
a manifest educational awakening throughout the countr}^ If we sur- 
vive twenty years we shall witness advances in learning more marked 
and far-reaching than the country has ever known before," 

Pedagogical Reading. — Aside from some general 
course of literary or scientific reading, all progressive teach- 
ers will read something relating to modern educational 

1 Address before the Massachusetts State Teachers' Association, 
1890. 



PROFESSIONAL READING AND STUDY 20 1 

psychology and practical pedagogics. They will sub- 
scribe for and read at least one weekly journal of educa- 
tion, and one educational monthly. They will read the 
reports of the United States Commissioner of Education, 
whenever they can find them in the public libraries, and 
other school reports whenever they can get them. 

Special Studies. — The student teacher who wishes to 
learn something about apperception, interest, character 
training, the oral method, and other Herbartian doctrines 
of the young leaders in the valley of the Mississippi, will 
do well to read McMurry's General Method, De Garmo's 
Essentials of Method, De Garmo's Herbart and the Her- 
bartians, and The Method of the Recitation, by Charles 
A. and Frank M. McMurry. 

Student teachers who wish to make special studies in 
school management and organization will read Dr. Joseph 
Baldwin's School Management and School Methods 
(1897); Dr. Emerson E. White's School Management; 
School Management, by Arnold Tompkins (1895) ; or any 
other good book of similar scope. 

On applied pedagogy they will read Colonel Parker's 
Talks on Pedagogics, Compayre's Lectures on Teaching 
(Payne), and Hinsdale's Teaching the Language Arts. 
For advanced thoughts on education in general, they will 
read Educational Reform (1898), by Charles W. Eliot, 
President of Harvard University. This book is made up 
of papers read by the author from time to time, at various 
kinds of educational gatherings. President Eliot has been 
an educational reformer for more than thirty years, and 
while his chief work has been done in connection with 
Harvard University, he has been a leader in all matters 
relating to elective courses of study in all kinds of schools, 
from primary grade to university. His book ranks as one 



202 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

of the most interesting and most instructive contribu- 
tions to modern educational literature. It is of special 
value to public school teachers, as well as to educational 
leaders. 

On the subject of psychology there are many books. 
The young student may begin with one of the clearest 
and most comprehensible, Halleck's Psychology and 
Psychic Culture (1898), and follow up the subject by 
reading Talks to Teachers on Psychology, by Dr. William 
James (1899), succeeded by other books whenever they 
appear. 

Here perhaps a thought from Professor James will prove of value to 
student teachers : " The art of teaching grew up in the schoolroom, 
out of inventiveness and sympathetic concrete observation. Even 
where, as in the case of Herbart, the advancer of the art was also a 
psychologist, the pedagogics and the psychology ran side by side, and 
the former was not derived in any sense from the latter. The two 
were congruent, but not subordinate. And so every^vhere, the teach- 
ing must agree with the psychology, but need not necessarily be the 
only kind of teaching that would so agree, for many diverse methods 
of teaching may equally follow psychological laws. To know psychol- 
ogy, therefore, is absolutely no guarantee that we should be good 
teachers. To advance to that result we must have an additional en- 
dowment altogether, a happy tact and ingenuity to tell us what definite 
things to say or do. That ingenuity in meeting and pursuing the pupil, 
that tact for the concrete situation, though the alpha and omega of the 
teacher's art, are things to which psychology cannot help us in the 
least. . . . Divination and perception, not psychological pedagogics 
or strateg}^ are the only helpers here. . . . But if the use of psycho- 
logical principles be negative rather than positive, it does not follow 
that it may not be a great use, all the same. ^ 

Within the past ten years attention has been directed 
to a study of the child rather than to the study of meta- 
physics. The teacher interested in this special direction 

1 '• Talks to Teachers on Psychology," by William James (1899). 



PROFESSIONAL READING AND STUDY 203 

will do well to read the various monographs of G. Stanley 
Hall, President of Clark University ; the Year Books of 
the National Herbart Society ; the leading educational 
journals in the United States ; and The Study of the 
Child (1898), by A. R. Taylor, or any one of several 
other books on this subject. 

For special studies in the history of education in our 
own country, students may begin with Martin's Evolution 
of the Public School System of Massachusetts ; followed 
by Boone's History of Education in the United States, 
and Dr. A. D. Mayo's historical sketches of early educa- 
tion in the United States found in the reports of the 
Commissioner of Education, from 1894 to 1898. 

Teachers should make a study, in detail, of the early 
educational history of the town, city, or state in which they 
are teaching school. Town histories and state histories are 
now available to some extent in most large libraries. These 
local records are of great interest and of priceless value. 

After many years of absence from New England, I re- 
cently took a trip across the continent in search of early 
educational records not to be found in California. There 
in the town records and town histories, I read accounts 
of early settlements, primitive schools, and warfare with 
savages. There were the rolls of honor of volunteer 
soldiers in a long series of wars — King William's War, 
Queen Anne's War, King George's War, and the French 
and Indian War — with pathetic tales of the slaughter of 
women and children, and woful stories of captivity in 
Canada. There in state libraries were the Army Rolls of 
the Revolutionary War, the War of 18 12, the Mexican 
War, and the great Civil War, most terrible of all. Every- 
where the fervent patriotism of the people was made 
evident in statues, monuments, and inscriptions in honor 



204 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

of heroes, soldiers, and statesmen. In every burial ground 
over the whole country, even in the remotest rural dis- 
tricts," memorial flags " blossomed over the graves of men 
who had served their country in battle. 

In the town histories, too, were, recorded the humble 
beg-innings of the common schools, and the names of the 
early teachers in common school and academy. 

Returning to my western home through the great met- 
ropolitan cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and 
Chicago, I realized that the seat of wealth, power, and 
empire had indeed moved westward. But I hold in living 
remembrance and renewed respect the sturdy pioneers of 
the East, who made their way against " heathen savages," 
established a democracy of the common people, helped 
to win Independence from the British, and while doing 
all these things, wrested an economical living from a stub- 
born soil, and yet found time to establish and organize 
a public school system that has stamped its impress on 
every township of American soil from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific. 

Applied Pedagogics. — In the succeeding chapters of 
this book, the modern course of study in the primary and 
grammar grades, will be considered somewhat in detail, 
and generally by grades. The course, as presented, will 
not be an ideal one, possible only in small classes under 
the most favorable conditions as to numbers and condi- 
tions, but one which shall represent the average American 
school under average conditions. An attempt will be 
made to present condensed pedagogical directions, hints, 
and suggestions in accord with modern pedagogics and the 
principles of educational psychology, and adapted in a 
measure to the schools as they now exist. In accordance 
with this plan, the outlines of work and method will be 



PROFESSIONAL READING AND STUDY 



205 



composite, representing the schools of no particular part 
of our country, but like a composite photograph, presenting 
the general American type. Moreover, liberal quotations 
will be drawn from the latest writing of American teach- 
ers, educators, and pedagogical leaders, thus presenting 
something of the drift of educational thought in the 
United States. 



CHAPTER V 

PEDAGOGICS APPLIED TO READING, WRITING, SPELLING, AND 
DRAWING, IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 

I. READING AND WRITING. 

First Grade or Year. 

The variety and excellence of the Reading Charts and 
First Readers now in use, render unnecessary any specific 
consideration of methods of teaching beginners how to 
read. Most teachers begin with the word-method and, 
after teaching a limited number of common words in easy 
sentences, proceed to introduce gradually the spelling of 
words by letters, aided, more or less, by the phonic method. 
After a short preparatory training, it is a good plan for 
teachers to write on the blackboards short sentences, such 
as children use in conversation, and let pupils copy them 
on blackboards, paper, or slates. In this way a lively in- 
terest may be awakened. 

Writing. — Writing should be carried along hand in 

hand with reading. Children may begin by copying on 

slates or paper, words or short sentences written on the 

blackboard by the teacher, or by copying script lessons 

from the First Reader. If possible, children should be 

allowed first to write on blackboards, and then to repeat 

the lessons on slates or paper. Writing with a pencil on 

paper is better than slate-writing, and after the first half 

year, the pen is better than the pencil. Encourage the 

crudest attempts. Show pupils how to hold pens and 

206 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 



207 



pencils, and encourage them to write easily and freely. 
The best development lessons are : First, practice on 
blackboards. Second, practice on paper or slates, with 
the pencil. Third, practice on paper with the pen. 

Spelling. — The first work in spelling should be com- 
bined with writing, by having pupils copy, first from the 
board and afterwards from memory, words written by the 
teacher. A little oral spelling may be taken at times to 
gain the help of the ear as well as the eye. 

'* All educators are now agreed," says Compayre, " that 
the child ought to be drilled in writing from the moment 
he enters school, and that he should not wait for this until 
he has learned to read fluently. More and more, the 
truth of this pedagogical maxim will be recognized, that 
drawing, writing, and reading, need one another and are 
mutually helpful." 

Aim. — The aim during the first year should be to 
change the child's oral vocabulary into the corresponding 
forms of the written and printed page. When children 
enter school at five or six years of age, they have been 
learning a spoken language from the time they began to 
lisp the wordspapa and mamma, under the painstaking tui- 
tion of mothers and other members of the family. Their 
colloquial vocabulary is by no means a limited one. They 
have already learned to speak their native tongue with 
some degree of " propriety," though they have never 
heard of grammar. They have probably learned by heart 
many Mother Goose rhymes, and have listened to folk- 
lore stories handed down from primitive times. Their 
active young minds have been developed by the method 
of nature. The thoughtful teacher will take all this into 
account when she begins to teach these children to read 
and write the language they already know how to speak. 



2o8 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

Stories. — As a continuation of the home method, the 
teacher will tell or read to the children many stories of 
which the following are types : The Three Bears, Cinder- 
ella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Bean Stalk, 
The Lion and the Mouse, The Ugly Duckling, and the 
Pea Blossom. 

Dr. Herman T. Lukens. of Clark University, makes the following 
suggestions about teaching children to read : •' Most children learn to 
read either as a matter of course, or else, if they think of it at all, the 
only reason they can find is because other boys are learning to read. 
... A child who does not want to learn will take from five to ten 
times as long to learn to read as one who is eager. To start with this 
live interest and eager desire is of a hundred times more importance 
than it is whether you use the word method or the alphabet method. 
The teacher ought to read a good deal of wholesome and interesting 
material to the pupils in the kindergarten and the primary school, and 
she ought to take pains to read well, with expression and appreciation. 
Then, in beginning, let her take some story with the substance of 
which the pupils are already familiar (say a fairy tale or a rhyme from 
Mother Goose) and use it for the first reading lesson. If this is done, 
the children realize what reading is, viz.: That it will enable them to 
get for themselves from books that sort of material. . . . When in 
this and other ways a good head of interest has been turned on, the 
second stage will be rich and abundant in eager attempts to imitate 
that which has aroused the activity. This is the great opportunity for 
suggestion and for indirect teaching, which is the best of all teaching. 

Helps for Teachers. — Teachers seeking practical illustrations of the 
possibility of combining the teaching of reading, writing, and drawing 
in this grade will find them in recent publications, such as, Crosby's 
Our Little Book for Little Folks ; The Finch Primer ; Baldwin's School 
Reading by Grades — First Year ; Lane's Stories for Children. Book 
L of the Heart of Oak Series contains a delightful collection of Mother 
Goose rhvmes. 

Second Grade or Year. 

Supplementary Reading. — After the first school year 
it should be the aim of teachers to secure the very best 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 209 

kind of supplementary reading matter suited to the wants 
and needs of young children. Instead of repeated reviews 
of old lessons, children should have new books that will 
awaken fresh interest. As soon as they begin to read a 
story because of its interest, their rapid progress is assured, 
and if suitable books are placed in their hands they will 
read a great deal out of school. Teachers need not fear 
to let them read stories that contain some hard words, pro- 
vided the stories are interesting. The Herbartian princi- 
ple of interest applies in full force in teaching children to 
read during their first three years of school life. It will 
be well for the teacher to make an experiment by select- 
ing, occasionally, an exceedingly interesting story, making 
a beginning of it in class, and then putting the books into 
the hands of the children and asking them to finish the 
story at their desks or at home. It is always a mistake 
to keep children long at work on short, easy sentences 
expressing only commonplace thoughts that excite no 
interest. 

An illustration may serve to give point to this state- 
ment. I know of one little fellow who learned to read at 
home before he was six years old. He was not a preco- 
cious boy. His grandmother taught him his letters from 
nursery picture books. In some way or other, probably 
coached by his grandmother, he learned to read nurser) 
rhymes. At length, in looking at the pictures in a copy 
of the St. Nicholas, he became interested in a story about 
the " London Cats' Meat Man." He stuck to that story 
for three weeks. It was full of long and hard words. He 
gave his grandmother, his mother, his father, and his elder 
sister no peace until he had read that four page story 
through. After he had mastered it, he read many other 
stories without help from any one. When six years old 

I AM. PUB. SCH. — 14 



/ 



2 1 o APPLIED PEDA G GICS 

he went to school and was put into the primer class. At 
this degradation he protested so vigorously that the 
thoughtful young teacher tried him successively in reading 
from a second reader, a third reader, and a fourth reader, 
and then wisely excused him from the primer class. 

The following are types of a large class of supplementary books 
suitable for the second school year : Easy Steps for Little Feet ; Heart 
of Oak Series, Book I ; The Hiawatha Primer ; Baldwin's Fairy 
Stories and Fables ; Baldwin's Reading by Grades, Second Year ; 
Baldwin's Fifty Stories Retold. A small set of each of these, or of 
similar books, varying in number, according to the size of the class, 
should belong to the school library. From time to time lend these 
books to children to read at home. If there is no school library, 
teachers should secure a copy of each of these books for their desks. 

Spelling. — While the greater part of spelling is learned 
by reading and writing, oral spelling should not be entirely 
neglected. An occasional oral spelling exercise is a good 
thing to stir up a class that has become weary of writing. 
Give occasional exercises, both oral and written, in spell- 
ing the names of things that are good to eat ; of articles 
of home or school use ; of household words, etc. In 
written spelling, train pupils to write short sentences 
from dictation, and to copy sentences from the reading 
lessons. 

Pupils should not be required to spell from memory all 
the hard words of their reading lessons, because their 
ability to read words runs far ahead of their memory to 
spell them. The words which children are most interested 
in spelling are the names of common objects at home or 
at school ; names of things they eat, the names of ani- 
mals, etc. 

For Reference. — Teachers who may wish to get a glimpse of what 
is possible within the range of story-telling in first and second grades 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 211 

are referred to Rice's Course of Study in History and Literature, and 
to McMurry's Course of Study for the Eiglit Grades. 

Third and Fourth Grades. 

For the third school year, the basis of reading should 
be some Second or Third Reader, to which should be 
added selections from suitable supplementary readers or 
other books of which the following are good types : 
Scudder's Fables and Folk Stories, Andrews' Seven Little 
Sisters, Heart of Oak Books, Book II., Baldwin's Reading 
by Grades, Baldwin's Old Stories of the East. 

During the fourth school year, in addition to the regular 
Fourth Reader, supplementary reading may be extended, 
using books like the following: Hans Andersen's Stories, 
Robinson Crusoe, Bass's Nature Stories, Eggleston's 
True Stories of American Life and Adventure, Bald- 
win's Reading by Grades. 

Fifth and Sixth Grades, 

The school readers officially adopted for these grades 
ought to contain choice selections of good literature. 
For supplementary books suitable for reading at home or 
in school, teachers are referred to a typical list at the end 
of this course. In addition to school reading, strive to 
direct home reading. If pupils have access to a public 
library, suggest interesting books for them to read. If 
there is no library, give them the names of at least two 
good books that they ought to read ; possibly their 
parents may buy them. 

Seventh Grade. 

In the seventh grade, begin to call the attention of pupils 
to the structure of sentences in their reading lessons. 



212 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

Require them to point out the subjects and the predicates 
in sentences selected from reading lessons. The sooner 
children learn to apply what they have learned about the 
structure of the sentence to sentences as they occur in 
literature, the better it will be for them. Avoid compli- 
cated forms of sentence analysis, and eschew diagrams. 
Among the books selected for supplementary reading in 
school or at home, there should be at least one containing 
stories of American history. 

Eighth or Ninth Grade. 

In the highest grammar grade, take up Gray's Elegy, 
or some other suitable poem for special study of grammar 
as applied to literature. Begin the study of figures of 
speech, particularly simile, metaphor, and personification. 
Lead pupils to think about the real meaning of poetic 
forms of speech, and show them how '* parsing " becomes 
an aid in ascertaining the meaning of long and involved 
sentences. The chief use of sentence analysis and parsing 
is to enable pupils better to comprehend the full meaning 
and force of literature. 

Home Reading. — In the crowded program of most 
schools, it will not be possible to find time for enough 
oral reading in class to make good readers ; therefore, 
teachers should encourage pupils to practice reading aloud 
at home. The standard of good reading should be : — The 
ability to read at sight both prose and poetry without 
mispronouncing common words, without stumbling or 
hesitation, or the repetition of words. Stage elocution is 
not expected. 

BOOKS. 

Every school library ought to contain several sets of 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 213 

supplementary readers or leaflets of good literature for 
use in connection with the standard readers. For valuable 
hints in selection, teachers are referred to Rice's Course 
of Study in History and Literature, and to McMurry's 
Special Method for Reading. 

Commissioner Harris says : " One great object of the school in our 
time is to teach the pupil how to use books — how to get out for him- 
self what there is for him in the ])rinted page. The man who cannot 
use books in our day has not learned the lesson of self-help, and the 
wisdom of the race is not likely to become his. He will not find, in 
this busy age, the people who can afford to stop and tell him by oral 
instruction what he ought to be able to find out for himself by the use 
of the library that may be within his reach. . . . The most important in- 
vestigation that man ever learns to conduct is the habit of learning by 
industrious reading what his fellow-men have seen and thought." 

Ideals. — The aim in the common schools should be to 
make known to pupils the proper use of books as sources 
of knowledge, and at the same time to inspire a love for 
literature which shall prove a life-long means of intel- 
lectual enjoyment and education. *' Our ideal should be," 
says John Dewey, " that the child should have a personal 
interest in what is read, a personal hunger for it, and a 
personal power of satisfying this appetite." 

" From the total training during childhood, " ^ says President Eliot, 
of Harvard, " there should result in the child a taste for interesting and 
improving reading, which should direct and inspire its subsequent in- 
tellectual life. That schooling which results in this taste for good 
reading, however unsystematic or eccentric the schooling may have 
been, has achieved a main end of elementary education ; and that 
schooling which does not result in implanting this permanent taste has 
failed. Guided and animated by this impulse to acquire knowledge 
and exercise his imagination through reading, the individual will con- 
tinue to educate himself through life. Without that deep-rooted im- 
pulsion he will soon cease to draw on the accumulated wisdom of the 

1 " Educational Reform " (1898). 



214 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

past and the new resources of the present, and, as he grows older, he 
will live in a mental atmosphere which is always growing thinner and 
emptier." 

Caution. — It is possible in the higher grades to crowd 
too much of even the best literature upon the immature 
minds of pupils. In the lower grades it is quite probable 
that some enthusiastic teachers carry reading to the ex- 
tremes which have so long characterized the endless drill 
on arithmetic in these grades. The work should be kept 
within the limits of enlightened common sense. The 
danger line has certainly been reached in the mass of 
Greek and Roman and Pagan mythology which has 
recently been forced into the lower grades. 

On this point Professor John Dewey in his trenchant paper on 
"The Primary Education Fetich"^ says: "We have to take into 
account not simply the results produced by forcing language-work 
unduly, but also the defects in development due to the crowding out 
of other subjects. Every respectable authority insists that the period 
of childhood, lying between the years of four and eight or nine, is the 
plastic period in sense and emotional life. What are we doing to 
shape these capacities ? What are we doing to feed this hunger } If 
one compares the powers and needs of the child in these directions 
with what is actually supplied in the regimen of the three R's, the 
contrast is pitiful, tragic. This epoch is also the budding-time for the 
formation of efficient and orderly habits on the motor side ; it is pre- 
eminently the time when the child wishes to do things, and when his 
interest in doing can be turned to educative account. No one can 
clearly set before himself the vivacity and persistency of the child's 
motor instincts at this period, and then call to mind the continued 
grind of reading and writing, without feeling that the justification of 
our present curriculum is psychologically impossible. It is simply a 
superstition ; it is a remnant of an outgrown period of history. All 
this might be true, and yet there might be no subject-matter suf- 
ficiently organized for introduction into the school curriculum, since 

^ TJlc Eorum, May, 1 89S. 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 



215 



this demands, above all things, a certain definiteness of presentation 
and of development. But v^e are not in this unfortunate plight. 
There are subjects which are as well fitted to meet the child's domi- 
nant needs as they are to prepare him for the civilization in which he 
has to play his part. There is art in a variety of modes — music, 
drawing, painting, modeling, etc. These media not only afford a 
regulated outlet in which the child may project his inner impulses 
and feelings in outward form, and come to consciousness of himself, 
but are necessities in existing social life." 

Books for Supplementary Reading. — The following books are sug- 
gested for supplementary reading, but this list is subject to amendment 
to-morrow if better ones appear : 

(From Fourth to Seventh Grade. ) — Hawthorne's Wonder Book ; 
Hawthorne's Tanglewood Tales ; Swiss Family Robinson ; Robinson 
Crusoe ; Elliott's Six Stories from Arabian Nights ; Baldwin's Story 
of the Golden Age ; De Garmo's Tales of Troy ; Jane Andrews' Ten 
Boys on the Road ; Longfellow's Children's Hour ; Holmes' Grand- 
mother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle ; Eggleston's Stories of Great 
Americans for Little Americans ; Baldwin's School Reading by 
Grades. 

Eighth and Ninth Grades. — Longfellow's Evangeline ; Dickens' 
Christmas Carol ; Julius Caesar ; Vicar of Wakefield ; Merchant of 
Venice ; Baldwin's Reading by Grades — Eighth Year ; e;tc. 



HINTS ON CLASS MANAGEMENT IN READING. 

While the leading idea throughout the whole course in 
teaching the art of reading should be the tJioiigJit side, or 
the quality of the reading matter, the '' mechanical-mental " 
side of the art must always remain an important secondary 
consideration. The extent of " drill work " in this direc- 
tion must be determined by the skill of the teacher and 
the ever-varying needs of different grades. It is evident 
that some attention must be given to vocal training, to 
correct pronunciation, to emphasis, and to inflection. 

Standard in Oral Reading. — Pupils should be trained 



2 1 6 APPLIED PEDA GOGICS 

to avoid a high-pitched, thin, sharp, unnatural, school 
tone, as well as the other extreme of feebleness and in- 
distinctness. It is a good standard to require each pupil, 
except those in the first and second grades, to read so 
clearly and distinctly that all the class can hear every 
word. The teacher should sometimes listen with her own 
book closed. In the lowest grades it is often a waste of 
effort to try to make timid children with feeble voices 
read loud enough to be heard by the class. 

Vocal Drill. — By short and suitable concert exercises, 
pupils should be trained to the proper use of the lips, 
tongue, and teeth in distinct articulation. Occasional 
breathing exercises are of great value as an aid in securing 
an erect attitude and the free use of the vocal organs. 
Occasionally give a drill exercise on words containing 
vowel sounds, giving special attention to those sounds 
which children in some parts of our country are apt to 
give incorrectly ; such as a in half, calf, laugh, etc. ; inter- 
mediate a, as in ask, last, past, after, etc. ; u after r, as in 
truth, rude, fruit, etc. The school is the proper place for 
correcting provincialisms in pronunciation. Explain the 
essential diacritical marks of the school dictionary in order 
that pupils may be able to find out for themselves the 
correct pronunciation of words. Train pupils to refer to 
the dictionary for definitions as well as pronunciation. 

Oral Expression. — In the highest grammar grade, some 
special attention slisould be given to manner of expression. 
At this stage of progress the motive of the pupil should 
be, not merely to pronounce words correctly, not merely 
to comprehend the thouglit in what is read, but to make 
others clearly comprehend the thought, feeling, or emotion 
in what is read. Good oral reading does not necessarily 
involve much training in elocution. Indeed, what is 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 217 

termed " stage elocution " should be avoided in school 
reading. 

Choice Extracts. — In each grade throughout the entire 
course, pupils should be required to memorize a few short 
extracts of prose or poetry suited to their successive stages 
of development. The recital of such extracts should 
occasionally take the place of a lesson in oral reading. 

Correlation. — In the higher grammar grades the read- 
ing lesson will become a correlated study of reading, lan- 
guage, literature, composition, and grammar, in var3^ing 
degrees according to the skill of the instructor in teaching 
the language-arts, and according to the quality of the 
reading matter in use. 

Thought. — On the thought side of reading, it is evident 
that for the first three or four years in school the teacher 
must take great pains in showing children how to get at 
the thought in their reading lessons, and how to study a 
lesson at home or in school. In the higher grades it is 
usually a difficult matter to lead pupils to study a read- 
ing lesson in the careful manner with which they study 
a lesson in arithmetic or geography. In most school 
readers there are some selections that may be read with 
little or no study ; there are others that the teacher may 
study with the class ; and, occasionally, there are some 
which pupils should study by themselves. It is here that 
the good judgment of the teacher must be her own guide, 
independent of hints or suggestions. It is useless, how- 
ever, for any teacher to expect that all pupils can be made 
to comprehend, in full, everything in all the literary ex- 
tracts which are read ; some children will assimilate much, 
others but little. It will be well for every teacher to call 
to mind whatever she can recollect of her own school ex- 
periences when she was of the same age as her pupils. 



2i8 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

II. MODERN WAYS OF TEACHING PENMANSHIP. 

In the Beginning. — At some time during the first 
school year, write on the board easy words and short 
sentences and let pupils copy them on slate or black- 
board. Little children like blackboard writing in large 
hand because the teacher and the class can see their work. 
Follow these lessons by slate-work in large, easy, run- 
ning hand. Do not trouble beginners with elements, 
principles, or analysis, but put them at once to writing 
words and short sentences. In fact, as said before, read- 
ing and writing ought to be carried along together. The 
capital letters are no harder to make than are some of the 
small letters. In blackboard lessons, see that your pupils 
form the habit of holding a crayon properly. In slate writ- 
ing, train pupils to hold their pencils as a pen is held. Oc- 
casionally give a drill exercise in making ovals, running 
m's, etc., in order to secure freedom of arm-movements 
and an easy way of holding the pencil. Of course their 
first attempts, like those in drawing, will be rough, crude, 
and irregular, as naturally they should be. Above all, no 
attempt should be made to force children during the 
first two or three years of school life into premature accu- 
racy and finish of handwriting. 

Give special attention to the manner of placing slates or 
paper upon the desk, and to the position of the pupil in 
writing. Under favorable conditions children should 
occasionally be allowed to use pen and paper after the 
first six months in school, writing in a large, free, and easy 
hand. 

If the school desks are not too high, train children to 
use the forearm movement in writing with pencils. The 
difficulty 4s that many desks are so high that no arm 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 



219 



movement is possible, and therefore children arc limited 
to finger movements, which are slow and labored. If you 
are allowed liberty to experiment, try the vertical writing 
now coming into extensive use. Do not sit down in a 
chair behind your table, as some teachers do, but go 
about among your pupils, place their slates or books prop- 
erly, take hold of their rigid fingers, and show them how 
to hold a pen easily. Do not expect to secure exact uni- 
formity in holding the pen, but make allowance for the 
natural tendency of the child. 

Free Hand. — Train pupils from the beginning to write 
with a free and ready movement, instead of the slow, 
constrained, rigid, snail-like tracing that so often prevails 
in school. Do not attempt to make the older pupils 
write a uniform '' copy-book hand," but let them form 
their own characteristic style. The main object is to 
make them write legibly, easily, and rapidly. 

Standard. — The standard should be to write a legible 
hand fast enough for the ordinary purposes of life. There 
should be no attempt to teach a delicately shaded, orna- 
mental handwriting like that of a special teacher of 
penmanship. 

Copy Books. — The conventional method of learning to 
write, which prevailed until recently, involved the use of 
a series of graded copy books, consisting of from six to 
ten successive numbers. Children were required to fill 
out, slowly and painfully, each half year, one of these 
copy books, striving to imitate the elaborate, delicately- 
shaded and hair-line penmanship of the copy. This 
kind of writing was painfully slow in execution. A great 
deal of time was wasted in vainly trying to make all 
pupils learn to write a fancy style of penmanship. The 
introduction into the school course of written exercises in 



220 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

the various school studies has already compelled, not only 
a reduction in the number of copy books but also a change 
to a simpler style of penmanship, bearing some resem- 
blance to the business handwriting of practical life. 

In many city schools engraved copy books are but 
little used during the first three and in the last two years 
of the course, thus limiting drill in copy-book lessons to 
the third, fourth, and fifth grades or years. In such 
schools, indeed, writing is mainly taught incidentally in 
connection with written exercises in the various school 
studies. The result is a saving of about one half of the 
conventional time generally allotted to writing. 

Illustration. — As superintendent of schools in a large 
city, I had an opportunity of observing the result of an 
experiment in teaching writing in a large grammar school 
which included primary grades. The principal was author- 
ized to dispense with copy books or to use them as she 
pleased, and to teach vertical or slant handwriting as she 
selected. 

At the end of eight months, I visited a first grade class 
engaged in writing short sentences from dictation. The 
children were writing with lead pencils on rough, unruled 
paper, in an easy, flowing, legible, vertical hand. In the 
fifth grade, the penmanship was good enough for all 
practical purposes in life, and very few special lessons in 
penmanship were required in grades higher than this. In 
the whole school the transition from slant writing to 
vertical had been made, to the delight of the children. 
There had been no striving after fancy penmanship, but 
in good writing the school as a whole ranked among the 
best in the city. 

Under the method pursued, there had been a great 
saving of time, and this extra time had been given to free- 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 22 1 

hand drawing from objects such as leaves, plants, vines, 
flowers, and figure drawing. Some of the middle grade 
classes were skillful in the use of water colors, and all were 
delighted with their work. In the higher grammar grades, 
the written exercises in the various school studies were 
dispatched in half the time required in most other schools. 
Psychological Principles. — In the Second Year Book 
of the National Herbart Society (1896), there is an ex- 
haustive paper by Dr. H. T. Lukens, on race and indi- 
vidual development, illustrated by reading, writing, and 
drawing. In relation to writing he says : 

" But a candid observation of facts would lead one to agree with 
Rousseau, Compe, Graser, Scripture, and a host of other German and 
American teachers who, regarding only the child's normal develop- 
ment and noting the increasing nervousness, injury to the eyes, and 
poor writing combined, proclaim with emphasis f/iaf the normal nas- 
cent period for learniiig penmanship is from nine to thirtee7t, and 
not earlier. Certainly this is the period when the handwriting is 
acquiring its individuality and the writing habits are getting their set. 
Hence practice and drill on regularity of slant, uniformity of height 
and shading, and gracefulness of outline will now be most effective 
and lasting. . . . To potter along with sixty minutes a week spread 
out through eight or nine years is to dissipate all interest and all 
lasting results in motor training. The Committee of Fifteen very 
wisely drops it out of the curriculum after the sixth grade, but for 
reasons stated above, very unwisely assign the drill period in penman- 
ship to the first and second school years, instead of the fifth and 
sixth." 

Professor John Dewey, of the department of philosophv and peda- 
gogics in the University of Chicago, in a recent article on " The 
Primary Education Fetich," ^ speaks of primary school writing as 
follows : " There is an order in which sensory and motor centers 
develop, — an order expressed, in a general way, by saying that the 
line of progress is from the larger, coarser adjustments having to do 
with the bodily system as a whole (those nearest the trunk of the 

1 The Forum, May, 1898. 



222 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

body) to the finer and accurate adjustments having to do with the 
periphery and extremities of the organism. To violate this law means 
undue nervous strain ; it means putting the greatest nervous tension 
upon the centers least able to do the work. The act of writing — 
especially in the barbarous fashion, long current in the school, of 
compelling the child to write on ruled lines in a small hand and with 
the utmost attainable degree of accuracy — involves a nicety and com- 
plexity of adjustments of muscular activity which can be definitely 
appreciated only by the specialist. Forcing children at a premature 
age to devote their entire attention to these refined and cramped 
adjustments has left behind it a sad record of injured nervous sys- 
tems and of muscular disorders and distortions." 

Summary. — Combining the imperative conditions in 
large public schools with the results of modern psycho- 
logical investigations, it seems safe to say that, during the 
first three or four years in school, children should learn to 
write an easy hand with comparatively little drill in exact 
uniformity of style ; that the next two years should be 
the period of drill in slant and proportion to fix the hand- 
writing ; and that thereafter the training in penmanship 
should be incidental in connection with written school ex- 
ercises. It seems safe to say, further, that in the future 
when pupils shall be trained, in accordance with psycho- 
logical principles, to learn reading, writing, and drawing 
carried along together, better results will be obtained with 
less waste of time, in each of the three branches. 

III. MODERN WAYS OF TRAINING IN ORTHOGRAPHY. 

The Spelling Book. — In the district school of a century 
ago, spelling was studied from the columns of a spelling 
book and recited orally in class, with little or no attention 
to the meaning or use of words. Written spelling was 
unknown. For nearly three quarters of a century, Web- 



■ PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 22^ 

ster's Spelling Book (1783), held almost undisputed sway 
in American schools. It was undoubtedly a great aid in 
securing correct pronunciation in schools at a time when 
a dictionary was a rare possession ; but its method, not- 
withstanding, was formal, logical, mechanical, and un- 
psychological. Yet it is not wise to underrate the edu- 
cational usefulness of this famous schoolbook during the 
long period which elapsed before it was superseded by 
something better. It at least secured a regular and rigid 
drill, and enlarged to some extent the vocabulary of the 
several generations that toiled over it. 

When graded reading books made their appearance and 
teachers began to require various written exercises in 
school studies, the spelling book fell into disrepute ; and 
in many schools it was dropped out altogether. But the 
experiment of dispensing entirely with formal lessons in 
spelling proved unsatisfactory, and a modified spelling 
book was restored in the form of numerous Word Primers 
and Word Books, the type of which was largely deter- 
mined by Swinton's Word Book Series (1873). 

How Spelling is Learned. — Spelling is mainly learned 
in reading, in writing compositions, and by other written 
school exercises ; but the great majority of teachers find 
it desirable to supplement this indirect and incidental 
training by the study of a modern word book which in- 
cludes elementary defining and more or less of word an- 
alysis, or a study of prefixes, suffixes, and definitions. 

Oral Spelling. — Make some use of oral spelling to train 
the ear as well as the eye, and to secure careful pronun- 
ciation. Written spelling, if used exclusively, becomes 
wearisome to pupils. Allow the class, occasionally, to 
** choose sides " and have a spelling match, thus appealing 
to good-natured emulation. In oral spelling, require 



224 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



pupils to pause in spelling after each syllable to show the 
division into syllables; but do not require each syllable to 
be pronounced separately. 

Text-Book. — If a word book or a spelling book is re- 
quired by the official course of study, make the best pos- 
sible use of it. Swinton's Word Primer and Word Book 
may prove helpful for supplementary purposes. 

Correcting Papers. — After a lesson in written spelling 
let pupils exchange papers and correct the spelling in one 
another's papers. This exercise in criticism is one of the 
most profitable of spelling lessons. 

Word Study. — The teaching of spelling should be so 
conducted as to unfold something of the meaning of 
words, and something of the formation of derivative from 
primitive words and roots. The exercise then becomes 
a part of good intellectual training, instead of a blind 
effort of memory. 

Defining. — It is not wise to require pupils to give for- 
mal definitions of words when the meaning is already well 
enough known. Pupils should be trained at an early age 
to the habit of referring to the school dictionary for defi- 
nitions. Mark any difficult words in the advance reading 
lesson, and require pupils to find out the dictionary defi- 
nitions. Give out, once or twice a week, a list of five 
words to be defined at the next lesson. Exact and full 
definitions should be required, in general, only from ad- 
vanced pupils, when they have gained the knowledge 
necessary to frame definitions. A simple explanation of 
the use of a word is often better than a formal dictionary 
definition. Beware of defining a word by means of a 
synonym equally incomprehensible. 

Waste. — Learning to spell the English language is a 
long-continued and laborious task, and there is little reason 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 



225 



to expect that the irregular orthography of our mother 
tongue will ever be so reformed that spelling will be made 
easy. The chief waste of time in school consists in re- 
quiring children to attempt to learn to spell words which 
are entirely outside of their possible vocabulary. 

IV. MODERN THOUGHT ON ELEMENTARY DRAWING. 

Practical Value of Drawing. — The general introduc- 
tion of drawing into both country schools and city schools 
marks one of the most notable means of enriching the 
course of study. Drawing has become a special aid in 
nature study. It is a source of unfailing pleasure and in- 
terest to children ; it lies at the foundation of manual 
training ; it is an important aid in the study of geography 
and history. Finally, it affords an aesthetic training that 
will make life pleasanter and happier. 

Hindrances. — The limitations to which most teachers 
are subjected I fully understand, having been subject to 
them myself during many years of teaching. Wherever 
" a system of drawing " has been ofificially adopted by 
boards of education or school trustees, teachers must 
master the directions and require pupils to fill out each 
successive number of the drawing books, whether the 
system be good or bad. Unfortunately, the general intro- 
duction into elementary schools — some twenty years 
ago — of formal systems of industrial, or geometrical, or 
mechanical, or design drawing, proved unsatisfactory in 
results. Even the employment of large numbers of special 
teachers failed to awaken any vital interest in drawing. 
The system pursued in technical art schools for older 
pupils or adults cannot profitably be applied to the lower 

grades in public schools. 
AM. PUB. scH. — 15. 



226 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

But whatever may be the limitations of the adopted 
course of study, it is possible for teachers to supplement 
the required work with various exercises in drawing 
adapted in some measure to the successive culture epochs 
of young children. 

Practical Hints and Suggestions. — Drawing, as a 
means of expression, should begin with the first lessons 
in reading and writing and should be carried along hand 
in hand with both. Drawing, indeed, is a primitive mode 
of expression which preceded the invention of letters. 
It is in accordance with psychological method that the 
first efforts of children should be directed to rude drawing 
rather than to writing. 

The primary children may be sent to the blackboard to 
copy something drawn by the teacher, or to indulge their 
fancy by drawing whatever they choose. Children do not 
hesitate to attempt houses, trees, hills, dogs, and the 
human figure. They prefer blackboard drawing with 
crayons to exercises on slates or paper, because their draw- 
ings are on a larger scale. Besides, teachers and pupils 
can see the pictures. Direct their feeble efforts, but leave 
full play to individuality. One child may take to flowers, 
another to boats and ships, a third to houses, and a fourth 
to horses. 

Allow pupils from the beginning to attempt drawing 
from real objects instead of from pictures on the flat. 
Drawing a leaf from the flat copy is only a makeshift com- 
pared with sketching the outline of a real leaf placed on 
the desk right before the eyes of the child. Drawing a 
house from the flat copy may secure a slow and painful 
accuracy and finish, but the process is dead drudgery com- 
pared with the attempt to make a crude outline of a real 
house. 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 227 

The most attractive and most profitable exercises in 
drawing will be those made in connection with oral lessons 
in elementary natural science, or with geography, or with 
history. Here drawing supplements writing. 

Dr. Lukens presents the subject psychologically as follows : " In 
the course in drawing, (as in writing) the same three stages should no 
doubt be provided for. In kindergarten and primary schools abun- 
dance of pictures and models should be on hand and should be made 
use of in every subject. Then comes the second transitional play stage 
of imitation and suggestibility before the skill of hand and the right 
attitude of mind for artistic production are developed. During this 
time drawing seems properly merely a language for expressing ideas, 
and should be so used in connection with all the other subjects of 
study. Diagrams, illustrated stories, and pictures of everything the 
children are interested in, will be the natural and pedagogical course 
as opposed to the systematic course, now so unixersal, and yet so 
out of place in the lower grades. At about ten years of age, Barnes 
thinks, (and all the others who have made special studies of the sub- 
ject seem to agree with him) the child may with profit take up the 
technique of drawing, or its grammar and rhetoric, as he calls it." 1 

At ten or twelve years of age, then, pupils having had 
this preliminary training may begin to learn the technique 
of drawing. At the right time, geometrical, mechanical, 
and instrumental, and design drawing may be made both 
interesting and useful. 

As my ideal of natural free-hand drawing in an ele- 
mentary school, I have in mind a grammar school for 
girls, which also included primary grades, in San Fran- 
cisco. For the purpose of experiment, this school was 
excepted from the conventional " system " required in 
other schools, and the principal and teachers were given 
full liberty to teach drawing according to psychological 
principles. In the first and second grades, the children 
began by drawing from real objects placed on their desks, 

1 The Second Year Book of the National Herbart Society (1S96). 



228 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

such as a leaf, a fern, or a spray of ivy, or a flower, or a 
specimen of fruit. Their work was free and easy, but it 
was followed up with the keenest interest. In the third 
grade their work showed artistic taste. In the fourth 
grade they were painting flowers in water colors. In the 
next two grades the girls could look out of the windows 
and sketch a city street in perspective, or make a good out- 
line of Telegraph Hill. In the two higher grades, they 
could make in fifteen minutes a good sketch of a human 
figure drawn from a little girl perched on the teacher's 
desk. An atmosphere of artistic taste pervaded the 
whole school. Drawing was a perennial source of de- 
light. The teachers as well as the pupils were enthusi- 
astic. 



V. VOCAL MUSIC AS A MEANS OF CULTURE. 

Fifty years ago, in country schools, singing was the 
exception, not tlie rule, and in city schools the instruc- 
tion in music was meager and unsatisfactory. Now, in 
most large cities a special teacher is employed to super- 
vise and direct the teaching of music. It is the exception 
to find a rural school in which singing is not a daily exer- 
cise. 

The kindergarten schools afford a good illustration of 
the extent to which rote singing can be carried with 
young children before they learn to read. The number 
of songs which these little children memorize and sing is 
a marvelous proof of the retentive memory of early child- 
hood. In the kindergarten, the songs are selected with 
special reference to melody ; and the children act them 
out by movement and gesture while singing them by 
words. The songs best adapted for children in the first 



PEDAGOGICS IN MODERN GRADED SCHOOLS 229 

two years in the primary school will be found in the vari- 
ous publications of kindergarten songs. 

The extent to which formal instruction in music and 
singing by note can be carried in small rural schools must 
be determined according to conditions. But singing by 
rote or by note is an essential school exercise. 

Apart from its great value as a means of aesthetic cul- 
ture, singing is one important means of cultivating 
the voice for expression in speech and in oral reading. 
In the recital of poetry, there is always a touch of the 
rhythm, melody, and harmony of song. The power- 
ful effect of school singing in stimulating the emotions 
is universally recognized. It is impossible to over-esti- 
mate the stimulus to patriotism resulting from the long- 
continued singing during the whole school course of 
such songs as " America," the '' Battle Hymn of the Re- 
public," '' Rally Round the Flag, Boys," and other na- 
tional songs and hymns. How much dearer has home 
been made to us all by the singing of " Home, Sweet 
Home ! " How many friendships have been made stronger 
by the singing of '* Auld Lang Syne ! " 



CHAPTER VI 

THE ART OF TEACHING LANGUAGE LESSONS AND GRAMMAR 

Grammar. — Within the last twenty years the use of 
a formal text-book on grammar has come to be limited in 
the best schools to the last two years of the grammar- 
school course. The general introduction of written exer- 
cises and written examinations, the written work in ele- 
mentary science, in history, in geography, and in letter- 
writing — all lend their aid in training children to acquire 
the habit of using language with some degree of " correct- 
ness and propriety," without the study of grammar. This 
is the natural method of development. In the lower 
grammar grades, the formal text-book on grammar has 
been superseded by " Language Lessons," in which the 
simpler parts of grammar are taken in connection with 
written sentence work and composition. 

The variety of good reading matter now available for 
school children is undoubtedly au important factor in 
training them to speak and write their mother tongue. 
But most teachers will admit that somewhere in the 
school course there must be some formal study of gram- 
mar. Colonel Parker, who cannot be classed as a conserv- 
ative, remarks in his Talks on Pedagogics : ** Whenever 
and wherever, throughout the course, a part of speech, a 
fact of etymology, a definition, an explanation, a rule, or 
general direction, a lesson in parsing or analysis, will di- 
rectly assist pupils in comprehending or adequately ex- 

2jO 



LANGUAGE LESSONS AND GRAMMAR 23 1 

pressing thought, any and every detail of grammar should 
be freely presented and freely used." 

There is little difference of opinion about the high 
value of a careful study of grammar in secondary schools. 
Sentence analysis is a logical study of the forms of 
thought. The study of English syntax increases the 
power of interpreting thought in literature. It affords 
the student a standard of self-criticism in a careful revi- 
sion of his own writing. It opens the mind to the great 
lines of thought in logic, rhetoric, and philosophy. 

A knowledge of grammar is essential to a full apprecia- 
tion of the masterpieces of literature. With advanced 
pupils, the right study of grammar is a means of mental 
discipline fully equal to that of mathematics. '' I hold," 
says Tyndall, *' that the proper study of language is an 
intellectual discipline of the highest kind. The piercing 
through the involved and inverted sentences of ' Paradise 
Tost ' ; the linking of the verb to its often distant nom- 
inative, of the relative to its distant antecedent, of the 
agent to the object of the transitive verb, of the preposi- 
tion to the noun or pronoun which it governed ; the study 
of variations in mood and tense ; the transformations often 
necessary to bring out the true grammatical structure 
of a sentence — all this was to my young mind a discipline 
of the highest value, and, indeed, a source of unflagging 
delight." 

But the unsettled point in dispute is the extent to which 
the teaching of grammar can profitably be carried in the 
elementary course of study in the common schools. There 
has been a general revolt against the " Murray type" of 
text-books ; against Latinized parsing, and against the 
hair-splitting refinements of sentence analysis. As a nat- 
ural result, many teachers have been led to the opposite 



232 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



extreme of advocating no instruction whatever in techni- 
cal grammar below the high school grades. On the other 
hand, there are many schools in which the Murray type 
of grammar still reigns supreme. Teachers who were 
themselves trained under the old regime cling to the 
forms of parsing and sentence analysis with which they 
have grown familiar. They greatly overestimate the value 
of text-book grammar to the great majority of common 
school pupils, who leave school at fifteen or sixteen years 
of age. In consequence of educational bias, they under- 
estimate the worth of composition work and language 
training. Having become grammatical experts by drill 
in teaching parsing and analysis for many years, they 
unconsciously assume that this kind of training is of ines- 
timable value to their pupils. 

Language Teaching. — The general method in language 
teaching pursued in a majority of graded schools at the 
present time may be briefly stated as follows : 

1. During the first three years of school life, reading, 
story-telling, and easy exercises in sentence-making and 
composition-writing. 

2. For the next three years, the beginning of literature 
in supplementary reading ; the writing of compositions in 
connection with nature study, history lessons, literature, 
and geography ; and the use of some text-book on 
language lessons. 

3. During the last two years of the course, the study 
of some formal text-book on grammar; reading of a dis- 
tinctly literary character ; composition-writing on topics 
correlated with school work. 

Hints and Suggestions on Methods of Teaching — 
Language Lessons. — In the lower grades, language les- 
sons and composition work constitute the best means of 



LANGUAGE LESSONS AND GRAMMAR 233 

acquiring a ready and correct use of language, which 
usage, in its turn, becomes a sound basis for the study of 
formal grammar. As children learn to speak good Eng- 
lish by hearing it spoken in school or at home, so they 
learn to write good English only by continued practice in 
writing under the direction and criticism of teachers. As 
a guide to first lessons in this work Swinton's Talking 
With the Pencil (1898) will be of value. 

Stories. — It is one of the best of exercises to let chil- 
dren reproduce from memory, in their own words, stories 
told them by the teacher, or which they themselves have 
read. In this way writing becomes a pleasure instead of 
a task. Originality in thought ought not to be expected 
of children. 

Letter- Writing. — One of the most practical of all ex- 
ercises is letter-writing. As soon as children can write at 
all, they ought to be trained to write a short letter. In 
every grade during the whole course, repeated exercises 
in letter-writing should be given, so that on leaving 
school every child should be able to write a letter neatly 
and correctly, 

In the best of modern schools the work in composition 
is mainly done in connection with nature studies, oral 
lessons in history, and lessons in geography. In this way 
writing becomes a pleasure. The work in composition is 
in accord with the pupils' mental equipment. In order to 
learn the art of expression, children must have definite 
thoughts to express. There is a general consensus of 
opinion among modern teachers that writing the English 
language is an art which must be learned by actual prac- 
tice in written composition, rather than by the study of a 
text-book on grammar. 

Formal Grammar. — In the grammar grade next to 



234 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

the highest, that is, in the seventh or eighth school year, 
if a formal text-book on grammar is taken up, teachers 
should first give their attention to the essential parts of 
etymology, assuming that pupils have previously learned 
something about the sentence. Special attention should 
be given to personal pronouns, to verb-forms and the 
tenses, to irregular verbs, to participles and infinitives. 

The forms for parsing should be brief and simple, 
limited, in the main, to the construction that is, the use 
of the word in the sentence. For example, in the sen- 
tence, '' America has furnished to the world the character 
of Washington," it is quite enough to say: ''America is 
a proper noun, subject of the verb has furnished ; has 
ftirnisJicd is a verb in the present perfect tense, agreeing 
with the subject America ; world is a common noun, ob- 
ject of the preposition to'' etc. 

Sentence analysis, free from technicalities and diagrams, 
may profitably be correlated with parsing. It is sheer 
waste of time to parse every word in a sentence. Select 
from a reading lesson only the words that are most im- 
portant in the structure of a sentence, or that are placed 
out of their regula rorder ; e. g. in the sentence, ** Their 
furrow oft the stubborn glebe has broke," — ■ parse ^/r/^^/ 
" Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight," — 
parse landscape. 

The ancient Latinized models involve too great waste 
of time for modern school use. Such endless repetitions 
of definitions and grammatical terminology result neither 
in *' logical training " nor in readiness of expression. 
Sentence analysis, — limited, is useful, but, when carried 
to extremes, it becomes a dead formalism, quite as unat- 
tractive to pupils as was the old-time parsing. The ex- 
tent to which teachers carry parsing and sentence analysis 



LANGUAGE LESSONS AND GRAMMAR 



235 



must be modified by their school environment, or their 
school text-books, or the examinations to which their 
pupils are subjected. Comparatively few teachers are 
free agents to determine their course of instruction for 
themselves. 

Syntax. — In the highest grammar grade, the subject 
of syntax may be taken up, limiting the work mainly to 
the half dozen rules that have the closest practical rela- 
tion to the writing of English. In this grade literary 
study should be combined with grammatical study. Sup- 
pose, for instance, the class were to take up Gray's 
Elegy, one of the most elaborate of short poems in the 
English language. This study would involve a wide 
range of thought. The poem is full of figurative expres- 
sions ; of historical allusions ; of long sentences that some- 
times include two or three stanzas. In some instances 
owing to the transposed structure of a sentence, it is not 
easy to determine which word is the subject and which 
the object of the verb. But the teacher with a little fore- 
thought can make the study one of lively interest. After 
such a course with a large normal class, many of the 
students came to me and said that they had never before 
perceived any practical use of grammar as applied to the 
study of literature. In the city of San Francisco, this 
poem, selected from the adopted school reader, was as- 
signed for special study in the highest grammar-grade 
class. Near the end of the year, I had the pleasure of 
examining, orally, more than thirty classes, most of which 
far exceeded my most sanguine expectations of success. 

Take another illustration of the possible use of a stanza 
from Byron's Apostrophe to the Ocean, found in most 
of the school readers. 



236 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

" The armaments which thunderstrike the walls 

Of rock-built cities, bidding nations quake 
And monarchs tremble in their capitals ; 

The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make 
Their clay creator the vain title take 

Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war — 
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy flake, 

They melt into thy yeast of waves which mar 
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of Trafalgar." 

Put the following questions to a class, and note the 
results : 

(«) What kind of sentence is this stanza ? 

{U) What is meant by *' armaments " ? 

{c) Parse nations. 

{d) Parse tremble. 

(<?) Meaning of " oak leviathans ?" 

(/) Who is "their clay creator?" 

^g) " Lord of thee " — Lord of whom ? 

(//) Explain the allusion "Armada's pride." 

(z ) How did the yeast of waves mar the " spoils of Trafalgar ? " 

Difficulties. — Grammar is one of the most dif^cult of 
the common-school studies. To teach it successfully 
requires the highest degree of .skill in the fine art of 
teaching. " It is more difficult than arithmetic," says 
Bain, " and is probably on a par with the beginnings of 
algebra and geometry." Therefore teachers should be 
very patient with pupils that make slow progress in the 
study of grammatical technicalities. 

The text-book study of grammar presented according 
to the scholastic logic of the Middle Ages, is now limited, 
in the main, to the two higher grades of the common 
school. As it has taken a century to lop off orthography 
and prosody from this subject, and to introduce language 
work in the lower grades, it may require a long siege to 



LANGUAGE LESSONS AND GRAMMAR 



237 



force the last intrenchments of Latinized English gram- 
mar in the eighth and ninth grades. There are many 
thousands of suffering teachers who are expectantly wait- 
ing for some modern text-book adapted to these two 
grades. Such a book should treat lightly on etymology, 
briefly on practical syntax, and largely on plain composi- 
tion-writing. The conventional Murray type is already 
obsolete, except in remote rural and pioneer schools, and 
in the schools of a few cities which have been stricken 
with arrested development in consequence of political 
misrule. The metaphysical refinement of interminable 
sentence analysis with long-drawn-out diagrams is fast 
disappearing, because the time is needed for better things. 
Rightly understood, properly taught, and kept within 
reasonable bounds, the study of English grammar in the 
highest grade in the common schools may prove of in- 
terest and practical value to the great mass of pupils. 

Formal Composition. — In the highest grades of the 
common school, whether in city or country, it ought to be 
possible for most teachers to take up, in addition to the 
composition-work done in connection with other school 
studies, a short specified course in special composition 
exercises. Of the four types of prose writing, pupils 
ought to take up the narrative and the descriptive, leaving 
exposition and argumentation for the high school or col- 
lege. For such work no text-book will be needed by 
pupils if the teachers have a practical knowledge of the 
subject. 

The beginning should be made easy and interesting. 
Teachers will direct the selection of suitable subjects, 
making sure that they are in keeping with the pupils' 
stock of ideas. Sometimes half a dozen subjects may be 
named, allowing each pupil to select the topic that suits 



238 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

him best. Occasionally, throw the responsibility of find- 
ing a subject upon the pupil, as an encouragement to 
originality. But in general avoid all abstract topics, and 
most subjects that require the free use of an encyclopedia. 
Occasionally, the outline of an essay may be given to 
pupils to fill out. Special attention should be given to 
the division of a composition into paragraphs. A compo- 
sition of any kind should have a suitable beginning and 
a fitting end ; must be capitalized and punctuated ; must 
be free from gross blunders in syntax. But reasonable 
teachers will not expect pupils to become finished writers, 
and will be very tolerant of crude efTorts. 

Need of a Standard. — At present there seems to be no 
generally recognized standard of attainment for common- 
school pupils in grammar and composition. There are 
many rural schools, and city schools not a few, in which 
composition writing is an unknown art, and in which 
grammar is limited to the dry husks of text-book tech- 
nicalities. The process of emancipation from custom, 
tradition, and educational bias is painfully slow. The ex- 
isting condition is fairly set forth by Professor B. A. 
Hinsdale in Teaching the Language-Arts, (1897), as 
follows : 

" In no department of study have the schools recently seen more 
dissatisfaction, more unrest, and more experiment than in this one. 
Everything is in a flux ; authors, superintendents, and teachers seem 
to appreciate that something bearing the name of English must con- 
stitute a marked feature of the schools ; but they do not, as classes at 
least, see clearly what it should be, or how it should be taught. As a 
whole, the schools are feeling their way ; as a body, teachers are wast- 
ing a great deal of their own and their pupils' time and energy in efforts 
more or less aimless and misdirected ; and there is little probability of 
the return of that unity and satisfaction which so strongly marked the 
Lindley Murray regime. Two things are clear: On:; is that the old 



LANGUAGE LESSONS AND GRAMMAR 



239 



rSgtme cannot be brought back ; the second is that to teach English 
successfully requires a combination of cultivation, taste, judgment, and 
practical skill which is not found in the common teacher of the 
subject." 

Modern Text-Books. — A helpful book for teachers as 
well as pupils is found in Charles De Garmo's Language 
Lessons (1897). Book L of this series is designed for use 
of the pupil during the third and fourth years of the graded 
school ; Book IL for the two succeeding years. 

In his preface the author states important principles, which are now 
generally accepted by progressive educators : " There are two leading 
ideas in these Language Books. They are (i) Progressive Exercises 
in Composition, and (2) an Inductive Approach to Grammar. The 
v^ork is consequently divided into two classes of lessons, Sentence Ex- 
ercises and Composition Exercises. It is a pre-eminent characteristic 
of both classes of exercises that they provide for the pupil a language 
experience, instead of presupposing one that he does not have. This 
conduces both to interest and comprehension." 

Another recent book of great value is Elementary English by E. 
Oram Lyte, Principal of the First Pennsylvania Normal School, Millers- 
ville (1898). The author's preface says: "This is a first book on 
formal language study. The subject as here presented is divided into 
three parts, each part representing a year's work in this branch. The 
method of development is inductive. What children are interested in, 
and what they may easily be led to be interested in, determined the 
nature of most of the lessons here presented." Lyte's Elements of 
Grammar and Composition, (1898), is the second book of this lan- 
guage series, designed for a two or three years' course in the grammar 
grades, is admirably adapted to its purpose. There is not too much 
of it, in which fact consists its great merit. Conservatives wedded to 
the formalism of the past may not like it, but it will be given a hearty 
welcome by thoughtful teachers who have long been waiting for just 
such a natural way of presenting the subject of grammar to the aver- 
age grammar school pupil. The third book of Lyte's Language 
Series, Advanced Grammar and Composition, is for use in high 
schools and normal schools. 



CHAPTER VII 

PEDAGOGICAL PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 

Most official courses of study, however definitely laid 
down and marked out, admit of some discretion on the 
part of teachers. It is desirable, therefore, for all teachers 
to hold clearly in mind the chief aims to be considered in 
teaching arithmetic. The suggestions made in the follow- 
ing rough outlines are intended as hints in the direction 
of modern tendencies among progressive teachers. They 
are derived from an extended examination of courses and 
text-books, from some experience in teaching, from a 
wide field of observation as a school-examiner and school 
superintendent, and from recent addresses and discussions 
on the subject of reform in teaching arithmetic. 

FIRST GRADE OR YEAR. 

The wise teacher of a class of beginners will first take 
an account of the stock of arithmetical knowledge which 
her pupils have acquired, at home, before entering school. 
In city classes she will find many children experts in 
counting, in reckoning the small coins of United States 
currency, and in making change. The knowledge of such 
children is empirical, it is true, but the teacher can utilize 
it to advantage. It would be refined cruelty to hold such 
pupils to the strict limitations of the Grube system or to 
the number lo, or 20, or 100. Perhaps some section of 
her class may need slow and patient drill with " count- 
ers ; " if so, give it to them, but begin the drill with ab- 

240 



PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 



241 



stract numbers as soon as possible. No harm will come 
to the children if they learn to count to 100 by I's; by 
2's ; by lo's. Take addition and subtraction of small 
numbers first ; in due time take multiplication and divi- 
sion. It is not wise to crowd four rules on the helpless 
children all at once. The Grube method with its endless 
** grind " on all possible combinations may be philosophical 
and logical, but it is not psychological, and it is often 
carried to absurd extremes. Children in this grade are 
keenly alive to arithmetic of the kind suited to them, but 
the making of endless tables of figures with plus and 
minus signs is neither rational nor attractive work. For 
various kinds of natural ways and means the teacher must 
fall back on her enlightened common sense. It may be 
advisable to let the children learn that '* 12 inches make 
I foot," by actually, themselves, measuring off twelve 
inches on the blackboards. Most of them knew before 
they came to school that there are 5 cents in a nickel, 10 
cents in a dime, 10 dimes in a dollar, 2 quarters in a 
half dollar, and 2 half dollars in a dollar. The time given 
to continuous class drill in number work should not ex- 
ceed 10 or 15 minutes in any one lesson. The teacher 
who feels the need of a text-book of detailed lessons will 
find Baird's Graded Work in Arithmetic, First Year, a 
very helpful book of well-arranged exercises of all kinds. 
Another modern book is Bailey's American Elementary 
Arithmetic for the First Five Grades (1898). But teach- 
ers should avoid all forcing processes and rest content 
with beginnings. 

SECOND GRADE OR YEAR. 

The average limitations of number work in this grade 
run in most schools as follows : exercises in the four rules 

AM. PUB. SCH. — 16 



242 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

limited, in general, to hundreds of thousands; the multi- 
plication table through 5's or 6's ; counting by 2's, 5's, 
and lo's to 100; addition of two-place numbers, no sum 
of units or tens to exceed 10 ; — e. g. 43 and 24, etc. ; sub- 
traction of two-place numbers, without "borrowing;" 
multiplication of two-place numbers by 2 and 3, no pro- 
duct to exceed 10: — e. g. 23 by 3, etc. ; division of two- 
place numbers, — e. g. 64 -=- 2, etc. ; easy problems such 
as are found in most primary arithmetics ; inches, feet, 
and yards, by actual measurement by pupils themselves ; 
pint, quart, gallon, by actual measurement ; cent, nickel, 
dime, dollar, by actual inspection of the coins, and by 
simple business questions in making change. As an ex- 
periment the above limitations may be supplemented by 
exercises in finding %, Yz, i^, |, and ^^ of small numbers 
evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10; and by taking up 
the reading and writing of dollars and cents, — e. g. 
$1.25, $i.SO, $5.00, etc. 

Fractions. — There seems to be no psychological rea- 
son why the beginning of a limited practical use of both 
common and decimal fractions should not be made in the 
second school year, and continued, under due limitations, 
in easy inductive lessons in the third and fourth grades, 
as a fitting preparation for formal text-book treatment in 
the fifth grade. But as it took me many years of teach- 
ing and experiment to reach this conclusion, I have no 
doubt that many teachers will dissent from it. 

The general postponement of any w ritten work with 
fractions until the fifth school year or grade seems to 
have been the result of the arrangement of the old-fash- 
ioned one-book arithmetics under which it was impos- 
sible for pupils to reach fractions until about that period. 
These books began with definitions and rules but omitted 



PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 



243 



inductive elementary exercises altogether. When pupils 
finally reached common fractions at ten or eleven years of 
age, they were required to go over many dreary pages of 
unprofitable work on factors, prime factors, greatest com- 
mon divisor, least common multiple, common denomi- 
nator, and least common denominator, before they could 
reach the practical operation of adding ^ and %. More- 
over, the subject of common fractions was exhaustively 
treated and applied to complex and difficult problems 
before pupils were taught the simplest operations in 
decimals or in the decimal currency of the United States. 

Teachers who were trained when pupils under the 
formal, logical, deductive order of text-book presentation 
of arithmetic do not always take kindly to the natural 
method of easy inductive lessons which ought always to 
prepare the way for a final formal treatment of the sub- 
ject. 

The fact is that when children enter school at six years 
of age, most of them are familiar with '' halves " and 
'' quarters " though they may not be able to express them 
in arithmetical form. They will tell you that one-half of 
half an apple is a quarter of an apple, though they know 
nothing about '' multiplication of fractions." They begin 
school with some practical knowledge of the decimal cur- 
rency of the United States, though they know nothing of 
'' decimal fractions." Now by utilizing the knowledge 
which they already have, the skillful teacher can make 
their first lessons in fractions pleasant and profitable. 

When superintendent of the schools in San Francisco, 
I personally tested the elementary knowledge of more 
than a hundred classes in the first and second grades in 
which, according to the course of study, no instruction 
whatever had been given in fractions. In every class in 



244 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



the first grade some pupils knew how to write Y^. One 
little girl when asked how she learned to write it, an- 
swered, " I live at 212^ Pacific St." They added halves 
almost as readily as wholes. 

In the second grades when the children were asked to 
write Yz and %, from ten to twenty per cent, of them did 
it, much to the surprise of their teachers. When the 
children were asked to add one-half an apple and one- 
quarter of an apple, the oral question was correctly an- 
swered, usually by from ten to twenty pupils in each class. 
Then they went to the blackboard, wrote the fractions, 
added them, and told how they got the answers. They 
said nothing about reducing fractions to a common denom- 
inator. They simply said, " One half is two quarters, 
and two quarters and one quarter are three quarters." 
These same children were experts in '* making change " and 
some of them could write dollars and cents, though they 
had been taught neither '' decimal fractions " nor '' United 
States money " at school. My presumption that the 
children had brains and had learned something outside 
of school was correct. 

Inductive lessons in arithmetic should begin with ques- 
tions about something that pupils already know, and 
should gradually lead up to something new to be found 
out. In giving such development lessons, teachers should 
explain to the class nothing that pupils can readily find 
out for themselves, should tell nothing in advance, and 
should lend a helping hand only when the class fails after 
having had ample time to think. This process is slow 
but very effective. In development lessons the fractions 
should be strictly limited to such as are used in the or- 
dinary business of life. As statistics show that nearly 
one half of the pupils of the public schools leave school 



PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 



245 



before they reach the fifth grade, or year, it is a matter 
of practical importance that such children should leave 
school with some business outfit of simple operations in 
both common and decimal fractions. 

Colonel Parker in his Talks on Pedagogics says : " The putting off 
of the teaching of fractions to the fifth and sixth grades is simply put- 
ting in abeyance an essential means of developing the mind. The 
child, when he reaches the fifth grade may know all there is to be 
known of fractions with the greatest ease, if fractions are really 
taught, — not the mere notation and numeration of fractions. Frac- 
tions should be taught from the first to last, and the same can be said 
in regard to decimal fractions. Decimal fractions in notation have a 
great advantage over common fractions. Decimal fractions are per- 
fectly easy and should be taught when ten is taught, and the notation 
of decimal fractions should always be learned and used when required 
in the development of number." ..." We have great complaint that 
children go out of school, after four or five years of study, without any 
knowledge of arithmetic, and the cause for this is that these subjects 
are out of their pedagogical relation. They have an artificial, illogical 
place in the course. Tradition has taught us to put off these things 
until a certain time comes, — a time when half of the children of the 
United States are out of school. The genuine demands for a child's 
growth always include the best for practical life at all times," 

Superintendent J. M. Greenwood of Kansas City states in his dissent 
from the " Report of the Committee of Fifteen : " " There is really no 
valid argument why children in the second, third, and fourth years in 
school should not master the fundamental operations in fractions. 
Not only this, they will put the more common fractions into the tech- 
nique of percentage, and do this as well in the second and third grades 
as at any other time in their future progress, ... In decimals, the 
pupil is really confronted by a simpler form of fractions than the varied 
forms of common fractions. . . . There should be a rearrangement of 
the topics in arithmetic so that one subject naturally leads up to the 
next." 

In the Report of the Commissioner of Education (1893-94, Vol. I,,) 
there are 60 pages of verbatim reports of recitations in arithmetic and 
language in the schools of Kansas City, Missouri, furnished by Super- 
intendent Greenwood, who had stenographic reports taken of lessons 



246 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

given by teachers under his direction. These lessons show the possi- 
bihties in the practical use of fractions in the first, second, third, fourth, 
and fifth grades. 

THIRD GRADE OR YEAR. 

The conventional work includes, in general, drill on the 
multiplication table to lo's or 12's ; addition by *' carry- 
ing," and subtraction by " taking from higher order ; " 
multiplication with " carrying" and with two-place num- 
bers for a multiplier ; long division limited to small num- 
bers. All of the work should be kept within reasonable 
limitations. There is a general tendency, fostered by the 
old-type arithmetics, to run the children at once into large 
numbers, long operations, and dif^cult problems. It is 
well to keep in mind a recent statement (1898), by Dr. E. 
E. White: " The forcing of young children to do prema- 
turely what they ought not to do until they are older, 
results in what Dr. Harris calls, ' arrested development.' 
The colt that is over-speeded and over-trained when tzuo 
years old, breaks no record at six. There is such a thing 
as too much training in primary grades ; an over-develop- 
ment of the reason. A little child may be developed into 
a dullard. More natural growth and less forced develop- 
ment would be a blessing to thousands of young children." 

What the children in this grade really need is a great 
variety of comparatively easy exercises, dealing with num- 
bers kept within reasonable limits, and with exercises that 
have some relation to their daily life. They need careful 
drill in accuracy, not abnormal rapidity of operation. 
They need drill on hundreds of short operations, not long- 
continued drill on ledger columns of addition, or puzzling 
problems that have no relation to human life or to busi- 
ness. 

Baird's Third Year's Work is full of reasonable and practical exer- 



PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 247 

cises. The preface to this book contains the following statement 
which should be kept in mind by teachers : " As many pupils are 
unable to attend school beyond the grade for which this book is in- 
tended, there are here included some of the applications of arithmetic, 
a knowledge of which will give to the pupil power to solve many prob- 
lems of every^-day occurrence." Accordingly, there are given a great 
many exercises which involve the use of dollars and cents in business 
examples. A few business fractions are introduced in a natural way, 
without note, or comment, or definition. For the use of any teacher 
who may wish to experiment still further in this direction, a few forms 
of inductive exercises are here introduced, which any teacher can 
supplement to any extent with similar models of her own. 

Models for Inductive Exercises. — Proceed at once, 
without any talk about numerator or denominator, to give 
a great many drill exercises in writing and adding after 
the type of exercises given below.. As children are ac- 
customed to write whole numbers in vertical columns for 
adding, it is the more natural way for them to write frac- 
tions in the same manner. 

Send the class to the blackboards, dictate the examples, 
give pupils ample time to think, and ascertain how many 
can do the work without any assistance. If put upon the 
right track, many pupils will find out for themselves a 
method for working an exercise in arithmetic. When 
necessary, help out pupils by a hint in the right direction. 





ADDITION 


OF COMMON 


FRACTIONS.— 


-SLATE 


MODEL. 




(a) 


(b) 


(c) 


(d) 


(e) 




(f) 


(g) 


% 


% 


1 


1 


6K 




2| 


2ys 


K 


X 


i 


1 
TIF 


2^ 




2| 


3f 


y^ 


X 


1 


iV 


s% 




sY^ 


i^ 


%. 


Yat 


1 


1 

To 


aYz 




6^4 


5/8 



















248 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

ADDITION OF DOLLARS AND CENTS AND DECIMALS. 

One good way of teaching decimals to beginners is by- 
means of exercises in writing and adding dollars and cents, 
the change from reading and writing dollars and cents to 
reading and writing whole numbers and hundredths is easily 
made, because most children know there are 100 cents in a 
dollar. 

FIRST STEPS IN ADDING DOLLARS AND CENTS. 



(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) 

I1.50 1.50 I2.10 2.10 I4-05 4-05 $1-12 

$1.25 1.25 $2.15 2.15 I2.05 2.05 |l.I2>^ 



MODEL FOR SLATE WORK IN ADDITION. 



2 



(a) 


(b) 


(c) 


(d) 


(e) 


(f) 


2K 


%i% 


|i-50 


$x 


I0.25 


•25 


3X 


P'X 


$1-25 


$'A 


I0.50 


•75 















MODEL FOR SLATE WORK IN MULTIPLICATION. 



(a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g) 

AV2 S% 6^ 6.3 $^% I4.25 4.25 

X2 X3 X3 X3 X3 X3 X3 



PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 249 



DIVISION. 



(a) 


(b) 


(c) 


(d) 


Yzoi \ 


4^2=? 


}4 of $ 4.20 


$ 4 . 20 -^ 2 = ? 


Kof f 


1-2=:? 


X of |i6.8o 


^16.80 -^ 4 = ? 


Kof^^ 


A - 2 =. ? 


)4 of $ 1 . 00 


$ 1 . 00 ^ 2 = ? 


%oi .6 


6-^2 = ? 


iof I10.25 


I10.25 ^ 5 = ? 



FOURTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

This course, in general, includes addition and subtrac- 
tion, numbers not to exceed thousands ; multiplication, 
the product not to exceed five or six places ; division, 
divisors not to exceed two places. Tables learned and 
applied in actual measurements ; — square measure — inch, 
foot, yard ; cubic measure, inch, foot, yard. To this out- 
line there might be added by the teacher willing to make 
experiments, the following : addition and subtraction of 
dollars and cents ; of decimals not exceeding hundredths ; 
easy business examples involving the multiplication of 
dollars and cents by multipliers not exceeding ten, etc. 

If two books are used, as is the case in many schools, 
teachers should take special pains to correlate the mental 
or oral arithmetic with the work found in the text-book 
on written arithmetic. Teachers who may wish to give 
supplementary work in common and decimal fractions, 
and dollars and cents, will find Baird's Graded Work in 
Arithmetic — Fourth Year — a helpful hand book ; also 
Bailey's Arithmetic and any one of several other modern 
text-books. 



250 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

FIFTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

Whatever may be the arrangement of the school text- 
book used by pupils, the teacher should modify its ar- 
rangement so that attention should be concentrated on 
accuracy in the four rules by means of practical business 
problems involving comparatively small numbers; on 
common and decimal fractions, taught inductively as far 
as practicable ; on the common business tables of weights 
and measures and their practical application in life. Un- 
fortunately many of the arithmetics in use contain a great 
deal of traditional padding, and vast numbers of examples 
and problems that have little or no relation to the busi- 
ness life of to-day. An excellent series of inductive ex- 
ercises in common and decimal fractions will be found in 
Baird's Parts IV. and V. ; in Bailey's Elementary, and 
in other modern text books. 

SIXTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

The chief work in this year, according to the average 
course, will be common and decimal fractions taken up in 
formal text-book style, and the practical application of 
tables to the ordinary business pursuits of life. The ob- 
jective points are to make pupils accurate, and to enable 
them to see through reasonable problems and apply prin- 
ciples for themselves. They should be trained to test and 
prove their own work. They should also be taught how 
to make out a bill and reckon it accurately, how to write 
a promissory note, and how to write a receipt. It is de- 
sirable, further, that pupils should be taught the elements 
of percentage, and a business method of reckoning interest 
on small sums of money for one year and fractional parts 
of a year. This should be done for the benefit of large 



PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 



251 



numbers of pupils that will drop out of school at the end 
of the year. Omit the greatest common divisor, as a 
separate topic, and take only so much of the least com- 
mon multiple as is required in the addition or subtraction 
of business fractions. Omit reduction and most of the 
operations formerly required under the head of compound 
addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Take 
only the parts that are actually used in ordinary business 
pursuits and in farm life. Bailey's Comprehensive Arith- 
metic will be useful to teachers. 

SEVENTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

The main work of this year should be percentage and 
its applications to the business method of commission and 
to simple interest. The incidental work should consist 
of geometrical exercises and measurements. A great deal 
of the work found under the preceding heads in many 
text-books may profitably be omitted. The concentration 
of effort should be to lead pupils, by means of simple in- 
ductive lessons, to a clear conception of principles. Chil- 
dren should be made to realize that all operations on 
business problems should be as accurately performed as 
if they were actual business transactions. The work in 
interest should be strictly limited to reckoning interest, 
omitting altogether the work found in many text-books 
under the head of " Problems in Interest " ; e. g., to find 
the tiinej when the principal, interest, and rate are given, 
etc. Special attention should be given to drill in writing 
promissory notes, and the making out of bills. 

Colonel Parker, in his Talks on Pedagog-ics. makes the following 
trenchant criticism on text-book work in " interest " : " Of all subjects, 
within a few years, the subject of interest has been made the most 
mysterious, complex, and most confusing; still, the subject of interest 



252 Applied pedagogics 

in itself is perfectly simple and easy. Bookmakers have crowded 
their terms of rate per cent, base, etc., upon us ; and when the pupils 
come to it they suppose that they are coming to a brand-new subject, 
when the fact is, if the subject of number has been developed, there 
is nothing essentially new to learn in interest." 

EIGHTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

The work should include simple interest ; profit and 
loss ; commercial and bank discount, omitting " true dis- 
count," which is not used in common business affairs ; 
simple proportion and square root. Cube root with ana- 
lytical explanation should be omitted, except as limited 
to such simple exercises as may be done by inspection ; 
e. g., cube root of 27 ; of 1728, etc. Exchange, stocks, and 
some other topics, still retained in many text-books, really 
belong to a commercial course. If the grade work is kept 
within reasonable limits, there will remain time to make a 
beginning of algebra, or of concrete geometry, or of both 
together. 

A thoughtful and practical monograph on Geometry in the Gram- 
mar School by Professor Hanus, of Harvard University, will be of 
great value to teachers as a guide in the right direction. A few 
quotations will show the trend of his suggestions : " In the grammar 
school the knowledge value of a subject should never be subordinate 
to the disciplinary value. . . . Grammar school instruction in geom- 
etry should give preference to those topics which have a practical 
application in the ordinary affairs of life. In so doing special attention 
must be given to those propositions which can be established chiefly 
through observation, empirically ; gradually the pupil must be led to 
undertake the easier deductive proofs. ... In the presentation of the 
subject, the best results will be obtained only when the pupil has no 
text-book which contains the definitions and propositions. When 
geometry is not taught as it should be, not only shall we fail to achieve 
the results at which we aim, but we may even produce results the 
reverse of those desired." This book contains a detailed outline of 



PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 



253 



work for the work in geometry for the last three years of the grammar 
school. 

BOOKKEEPING IN GRAMMAR GRADES. 

By state law in some cases, and by city ordinances in 
others, bookkeeping is made a required study in connec- 
tion with arithmetic as was '* the casting of accounts " in 
times past. To a limited extent this is well enough, but 
there has grown up a tendency to convert the highest 
grammar grade into a commercial school. This plan is 
not the part of educational wisdom. Other and more im- 
portant things ought not to be excluded by attempting to 
make boys and girls expert accountants. 

President Eliot emphasizes this matter as follows : " I believe it to 
be the most useless subject in the entire program, for the reason 
that the bookkeeping taught is a kind never found in any real business 
establishment. . . . What a boy or girl can learn at school which will 
be useful in after-life in keeping books or accounts for any real busi- 
ness is a good handwriting, and accuracy in adding, subtracting, mul- 
tiplying, and dividing small numbers. As trades and industries have 
been differentiated in the modern world, bookkeeping has been differ- 
entiated also, and it is, of course, impossible to teach in school the 
infinite diversities of practice."^ 

RELATIVE VALUE OF ARITHMETIC. 

During the greater part of this century, arithmetic was 
made the major study of the common schools, incident- 
ally to learn how to " reckon," but mainly for the philo- 
sophical reason that it was supposed to give a better 
" mental discipline " than any other study. In a majority 
of the schools of to-day it is allowed more time than any 
other school study. But there is a general tendency 
towards accuracy rather than rapidity, quality rather than 

1 "Educational Reform" (1898). 



254 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

quantity, simplicity rather than complexity, business exer- 
cises rather than schoolmaster's problems, and clearness of 
ideas rather than endless drudgery over wearisome exer- 
cises, problems in compound numbers, complex fractions, 
compound interest, compound proportion, and cube root. 
There is no shadow of doubt that this tendency will end 
in a general recasting of the order of presentation as found 
in the older school arithmetics, and in a still greater re- 
duction of the time now devoted to the study which our 
forefathers made the most important pursuit of school 
life. 

In many city courses of study, not only has the time 
given to arithmetical work been reduced from nine years 
to seven, but there has also been a great reduction in the 
quantity of arithmetic. Some of the time-honored topics 
formerly included in text-books have been eliminated, and 
others, though still retained in the books, have been 
dropped in practice. The latest type of the improved 
modern text-book is found in Baird's Graded Work in 
Arithmetic (1898), consisting of five small books, ar- 
ranged in specific '' Parts," one for each grade or year. 
Bailey's American Elementary Arithmetic for the first 
five grades is an excellent text-book, as is also the 
American Comprehensive Arithmetic, which follows it. 
There are several other new series of text-books, on a 
similar plan, all in the direction of educational reform. 

HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS ABOUT ARITHMETIC. 

Essentials. — The essential parts of arithmetic which 
pupils should understand are the four rules, common and 
decimal fractions, the tables of money, weights and meas- 
ures with their practical application, percentage, and in- 



PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 255 

terest. A great deal that passes in text-books under the 
name of arithmetic consists largely of conventional exer- 
cises, of no practical and of little disciplinary value. 

Accuracy. — Pupils in the higher grades should be re- 
quired to state not only ivJiat they do, but why they do 
it. They should test the truth and accuracy of their pro- 
cesses by proof, the only test they will have to rely upon 
in real business transactions. All grades should be 
trained to special accuracy in addition. One good exer- 
cise is to dictate a column of units to the class, the amount 
not to exceed 50 or 100; give ample time for every pupil 
to add the column upward and then downward ; when 
every pupil gets the correct answer, the class is trained to 
accurate work. 

Analysis. — Do not try to force upon young pupils 
demonstrations and analyses which are suitable only for 
older pupils. It is a marked defect in some school arith- 
metics that they are filled up with explanations and dem- 
onstrations. The explanations, if given at all, should be 
given orally by the teacher ; they do not belong to a 
pupil's book, unless it is assumed that the teacher knows 
nothing whatever about the subject. Another marked 
defect, arising from limJted space, is the too sudden tran- 
sition from very simple questions to complex ones. The 
teacher should remedy, in some degree, this defect by 
substituting development exercises. Difficult problems, 
requiring sustained processes of reasoning, or complicated 
forms of analytical explanations, if used at all, should be 
given only to advanced pupils. In fact, what are termed 
" hard problems " do not come within the province of the 
common school at all, if, indeed, of any school. 

Time. — The time devoted to arithmetic should not ex- 
ceed four hours a week, and in primary grades it may be 



256 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

reduced to two hours, or less. Most of the arithmetical 
work should be done in school. 

Educational Reform. — Arithmetic when rightly taught 
is a means of promoting sustained attention ; of render- 
ing the memory more tenacious by retaining the condi- 
tions of a question in mind during the solution ; and of 
cultivating, to some extent, the reasoning powers. To 
a certain extent, arithmetic is a business necessity. There 
are many teachers, however, and their number is rapidly 
increasing, who no longer rank arithmetic as the most 
important subject in the common-school course of study. 
These reformers recognize the practical need of knowing 
how to cipher, but they believe that the " mental disci- 
pline " acquired by a long-continued study of arithmetic 
is greatly over-estimated by the majority of school boards 
and school teachers. They insist that arithmetic should 
no longer be made the major study in school as it was in 
the days of our forefathers. They demand that a part of 
the time now given to this study should be devoted to 
better things. 

Other Reforms. — This cutting down of time given to 
arithmetic is only one of several reforms now pressing 
upon us. The plain truth is that the grammar grades, 
including the last four years of the elementary school 
course, seem at present to form the most inflexible and 
non-progressive part of the entire public system, so far as 
the course of study is concerned. A flexible or an elect- 
ive course exists in all state universities and technical 
colleges and in many of the higher institutions outside of 
the public school system. The high schools have in gen- 
eral at least two courses, a classical course and an English 
course, and some of them have a broader course of elect- 
ives. The work in primary grades has been brought into 



PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO ARITHMETIC 



257 



harmony with advanced methods and with modern psy- 
chological principles. But the grammar school stands 
alone as a monument of the past. In a few enlightened 
educational centers some slight modifications have been 
made, and that is about all. 

One great barrier standing in the way of possible reform is the 
crowding of from 45 to 55 pupils into one room to be taught by one 
teacher. Here is what President EHot says in his paper on the 
Grammar School of the Future, and every word of it is true : " It is 
obvious that the young woman with fifty or sixty pupils before her is 
attempting what no mortal can perform. ... I suppose it is practi- 
cable for one young woman to hear the lessons out of one book of all 
the fifty children before her during the hours of the grammar school 
session. . . . But the new teaching is of quite a different character. 
To double the number of teachers would not be too much ; for 
twenty-five or thirty pupils are enough for one teacher to grapple 
with. The individual requires teaching in these days, and no teaching 
is good which does not pay attention to the individual. We are 
coming to accept the doctrine that no teaching is good which does 
not awaken interest in the pupil. . . , But the American grammar 
school of the future will make that the rule which is now the excep- 
tion — every child without special favor to get at the right subject at 
the right age and to pursue it as fast as he is able to travel." 

Need of Some Common Standard. — All teachers are 
agreed that practical arithmetic should be taught in the 
elementary schools to the extent required by the demands 
of modern life. The unsettled point in question is the 
extent to which it shall be carried as a means of mental 
discipline. This point cannot be decided by discussion. 
It must be determined by careful examination and experi- 
ment carried on in a spirit of scientific investigation. It 
cannot be said, at present, that there is any fixed standard 
of attainment which is generally agreed upon by teachers, 
by school superintendents, or by other school officials. 
However, the reform is well under way, and the methods 

AM. PUB. SCH. 17 



258 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

of old-time schoolmasters together with the ** sums " and 
** rules " of old-time text-books will become more and more 
uncouth, and finally disappear altogether. It certainly is 
educational barbarism to require pupils in rural schools or 
in city grammar schools to cram a course in arithmetic 
far in excess of the standard for admission into colleges 
and universities. 



CHAPTER VIII 

PSYCHOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING ELEMENTARY 

HISTORY 

The value of history as a school study depends on the 
manner in which it is taught, and on what the term 
" history " is made to include. Not many years ago> when 
learning history meant the memorizing and reciting of the 
pages of a text-book, it is not to be wondered at that pupils 
found the subject uninteresting, and that teachers regarded 
history as of little educational value. But history is now 
made to include stories, tradition, myths, biography, and 
poetry in addition to formal text-book study. Instruction 
begins with stories and oral lessons, and is made an im- 
portant part of regular grade work throughout the whole 
course. The Herbartians present history as a means of 
promoting patriotism, of fitting for intelligent citizenship, 
and above all, of moral training; in other words, as the 
chief means of forming character. 

Oral Lessons in History. — Whatever instruction in 
history is given in the second, third, fourth, fifth, and 
sixth grades must, of necessity, be mainly by oral lessons. 
Perhaps the majority of teachers are unaccustomed to 
giving such lessons. This, however, is no reason why 
they should not fit themselves for the work by thoughtful 
practice. The training departments of state and city 
normal schools are now sending out annually large num- 
bers of graduates well trained in this line of work, and 
many untrained teachers have the opportunity of visiting 

259 



26o APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

their classes and learning their methods by actual obser- 
vation. The school journals are full of lessons and sug- 
gestions in this direction. Moreover, there are several 
books recently published which outline in detail the history 
work that has been done by special teachers in the train- 
ing classes connected with large normal schools. One of 
these is the Special Method in History and Literature 
by Charles A. McMurry, a book that is replete with com- 
mon sense, and is imbued with a spirit of enthusiasm that 
can hardly fail to convince the most doubtful teacher of 
the value of oral lessons and the possibility of learning 
how to give them. 

Moreover, to meet the needs of the new method of 
history teaching, there have been published within the 
last few years a large number of history stories for young 
children in the lower grades. Most of these inexpensive 
little books have been written by teachers experienced in 
teaching primary grades in public schools, and familiar 
with the wants and needs of children. These history 
sketches are fully in accord with the spirit of modern 
educational thought. They are psychological in method 
and interesting in style and illustration. Teachers can 
safely study them as models for their own oral lessons, or 
make use of them as supplementary reading matter in 
school. 

The following outlines are suggestive only of begin- 
nings, but their meagerness and simplicity can be supple- 
mented by reference to the elaborate courses for the train- 
ing classes connected with normal schools. 

SECOND AND THIRD GRADES OR YEARS. 
It may be well for a teacher inexperienced in giving 



PRIN/CPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 26 1 

oral lessons to begin with a series of short talks in familiar 

homelike language about Columbus and his discovery of 

America; about Washington, his boyhood, his life as a 

surveyor, and his early experience in Indian warfare ; and 

about Abraham Lincoln, as a study of the poverty and 

hardships of pioneer life in the valley of the Mississippi. 

'' The oral treatment of such stories," says McMurry, 

" when the personal interest, energy, and skill of the teacher 

give the facts and scenes an almost real and tangible 

form — this oral treatment is the thing and the only thing 

to give a child the best start in historical study." 

As an aid in this direction, teachers will do well to 

secure such inexpensive leaflets of biography as are found 

in The Young Folks' Library, consisting of short 

sketches of Columbus, Washington, and Lincoln ; or in 

those in the Werner Biographical Booklets, such as the 

stories of Washington, Lincoln, Clay, Franklin, and 

Webster, written by Dr. James Baldwin. Teachers who 

think they cannot learn to tell such stories as these can at 

least make them lifelike by reading them to their pupils. 

My own faith in the awakening- power of oral lessons is made strong 
from my personal experience as a boy, as well as by my later experi- 
ence as a teacher. Mv own interest in history began, when I was 
six or seven years old, with stories about the Revolutionary War 
told by my grandfather around the fireside on winter evenings, I 
well remember my boyish admiration for him as he told me how he 
ran av/ay from home when he was only sixteen, to enlist in the 
Revolutionary Army. And right there, over the fireplace, was the 
old flint-lock gun that he brought back from the war. I also heard 
many stories of famous Indian fights, handed down by tradition, for 
my ancestors were New England pioneers. My oral lessons were 
learned outside of school, but in the true psychological method. 
When a little older, my interest in history was intensified by a book 
of Stories About Indians, which my father gave me. That book I 
read and re-read until I knew most of the stories by heart. This 



262 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

method, also, was psychologically correct, but it was not then the 
school method. So lively was the interest thus excited that I asked 
the teacher to let me join a class of older boys who were studying- 
history of the United States. It was the recollection of my unsatis- 
fied longing at this time for more books to read, which led me, a 
quarter of a century afterwards, when State Superintendent of Public 
Instruction in California, to secure by the most strenuous efforts, after 
repeated failures, a state law which reserves a small percentage of 
the school moneys apportioned to each school district to be expended 
by the trustees and teacher in buying library books. Into these 
school libraries there are now going, annually, thousands of volumes 
of history stories, nature stories, and good literature for pupils and 
also books of reference for the use of teachers. 



FOURTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

After giving an oral lesson, question the children on 
the succeeding day to find out how much they remember 
about it. It may be well in this grade to let pupils begin 
to make notes of a very few important points. In country 
schools taught by only one teacher, when there are only 
two or three pupils in a grade, it will be advisable to put 
several grades together. It will be well, also, when the 
teacher is crowded for time, to let pupils take home some 
suitable history stories from the school library, if the 
school is provided with a library. In graded city schools, 
which are now quite generally provided with sets of his- 
tory stories for supplementary reading, such books can be 
read in school to supplement talks by the teacher. 

TOPICS FOR ORAL LESSONS. 

Stories of the settlement at Plymouth by the Pilgrims, and at 
Boston by the Puritans. 

Stories of the settlement of Virginia at Jamestown. 
Stories of the settlement of Pennsylvania. 



PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 263 

Stories about the settlement of the pupils' own state, city, or 
town. 

Connect history with geography by locating on the map the places 
named in history lessons. 

BOOKS FOR THE TEACHER'S DESK OR THE SCHOOL LIBRARY. 

Stories of Great Americans for Little Americans. 

Brookes' Stories of the Old Bay State. 

Mowry's First Steps in the History of Our Country. 

Clarke's Story of Csesar. 

Mara Pratt's American History Stories, Vol. I. 

Guerber's Story of the Greeks. 

McMurry's Pioneer History Stories. (This book is especially de- 
signed for schools in the Valley of the Mississippi.) 

Wagner's Pacific Coast History Stories, Vol. I. (This book is 
specially designed for schools in the Pacific Coast States.) 

Hittell's Brief History of California, Vol. I. Discovery and Early 
Voyages. (California Classes.) 

FIFTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

In this grade pupils may be required not only to put 
into their notebooks a few main points of topics pre- 
sented, but also, occasionally, to write out a report of all 
they can remember in the form of connected narrative. 

Topics for Talks. — The Settlement of New York. Stories about 
Washington, ending with an account of Braddock's Defeat. Stories 
about Benjamin Franklin. Story of Sir Walter Raleigh and his 
attempts at settlement. Settlement of the French in Canada. Settle- 
ment of the Spaniards in America. Conquest of Mexico by Cortez. 
The Indians of America. Stories of Indian Wars in connection with 
accounts of pioneer hfe. 

Books for Teachers or for School Libraries. — The following books 
will be useful to teachers either as models of oral lessons, or as sources 
from which to make selections to be read to the class, and they will be 
useful in the school library for home reading by pupils : Swinton's 
First Lessons in our Country's History. Eggleston's Stories of Amer- 



264 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

ican Life and Adv^enture. Guerber's Story of the Thirteen Colonies. 
Wright's Children's Stories of American History. McMurry's Pioneer 
Histor}-' Stories. Montgomery's Beginner's American History. Johon- 
not's Stories of Our Country. Dodge's American History Stories. 
Mowry's First Steps in the History of Our Country. 

SIXTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

In schools provided with sets of suitable history stories, 
oral lessons may be varied by selections to be read in class, 
or at home, and talked about in succeeding oral exercises. 

TOPICS FOR LESSONS. 

1. A more extended treatment of the four great centers of settlement 
in our country, namely : Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, and 
Pennsylvania. 

2. Further accounts of the settlement of the children's own state. 

3. Stories of the French and Indian War. 

4. Stories of pioneer life in log cabins. 

5. Common schools in colonial times. 

Books for Teachers and School Libraries. — Eggleston's First Book 
in American History. Pratt's American History Stories, Vols. H and 
HI. McMurry's Pioneer History Stories. Mowiy's First Steps in the 
History of Our Country. 

SEVENTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

In many graded city schools, pupils in this grade begin 
to use some primary history of the United States, such as 
Swinton's, or Eggleston's, or Montgomery's, or Mowry's, 
either as a supplementary reader or as a text-book for 
the formal and regular study of the subject. In ungraded 
country schools, also, it is desirable, if practicable, that 
some primary book should be read or studied by pupils. 
But the use of a book should not be allowed to super- 
sede altogether the oral lessons by the teacher. However, 



PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 265 

the use of a book will mainly determine the order of 

topics. Teachers should now call in the aid of literature 

to reinforce history lessons by reading, for example, 

" Paul Revere's Ride," ^'^ Grandmother's Story of Bunker 

Hill Battle," " Lodge's Story of the Battles of Concord, 

and Lexington, and Bunker Hill." The life of Washington 

may be made the thread on which to string the events of 

the War of the Revolution. Short biographical accounts 

should be given of Franklin, John Adams, Jefferson, 

Putnam, Greene, Morgan, Sumter, and other American 

patriots. 

Books for Teachers or for School Libraries. — Scudder's Life of 
Washington ; Lodge's Story of the Revolution ; Mowry's First Steps 
in the History of Our Country. 

EIGHTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

In the eighth grade, or in the eighth and ninth grades 
where the school course includes nine years or grades, the 
history of our country will be completed up to the pres- 
ent time. The manner of using the adopted text-book, 
whatever it is, must be determined by the judgment and 
skill of the teacher. John Fiske's History of the United 
States will prove useful, partly on account of its excel- 
lence as a schoolbook, and partly on account of the great 
value of the work of Dr. Hill in the way of topical anal- 
ysis, suggestive questions and directions for teachers. 
As additional books of reference, use John Bach Mc- 
Master's School History of the United States (1897); 
also McMaster's History of the People of the United 
States, for reference. 

HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS ON TEACHING HISTORY. 
History and geography are correlative studies, and 



266 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

skillful teachers will make each supplement the other. 
In this study, more than in most other elementary school 
branches, the teacher, by his skill, tact, and stores of in- 
formation, can make the subject one of living interest. 

Assignment of Lessons. — When an advance lesson is 
assigned, call attention to the leading points, and let 
pupils note them with pencil marks. A considerable part 
of the history is intended, not to be memorized, but only 
to be carefully read. If there are any reference books in 
the school library, or if pupils have any at home, suggest 
to the class some particular topic or topics about which 
they may find fuller information. 

Selection. — Of the early discoveries treated of so fully 
in most text-books, single out three or four to be studied 
with care, and let the remainder be read at home or in 
the class. In the period of settlements, select the four 
great centers, namely : Virginia, Massachusetts, New York, 
and Pennsylvania. So in the Revolutionary War, single 
out a very few marked events and have them learned so 
that they cannot be forgotten. Dwell at length on events 
that happened in the pupil's own state. 

Literature. — If the battle of Bunker Hill is the subject 
of a history lesson, read to your class the vivid picture of 
it in '' Grandmother's Story of Bunker Hill Battle " by 
Oliver Wendell Holmes. If the battles of Lexington and 
Concord are included in the lesson, read " Paul Revere's 
Ride," and the story of these battles found in Lodge's 
" Story of the Revolution." When the battle of Gettys- 
burg is reached, read Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg 
Address and Bret Harte's " John Brown of Gettysburg." 

Main Points. — Fix in the memory the causes and the 
results of the War of the Revolution, the War of 1812, the 
War with Mexico, the Civil War, and the War with Spain ; 



PRINCIPLES IN TEACHING HISTORY 267 

but do not attempt to make pupils remember the dates of 
many battles. 

Chronology. — Do not attach much importance to 
chronological tables, except for reference. Fix in the 
minds of the pupils the dates of a few great events, and 
fasten them there by frequent reviews. A multitude of 
minor dates may be temporarily learned for to-day's les- 
son, only to be crowded into oblivion by to-morrow's 
recitation. " By means of history,*' says Montaigne, 
'* the pupil enjoys intercourse with the great men of the 
best periods ; but he must learn, not so much the year 
and the day of the destruction of a city, as noble traits of 
character ; not so much occurrences, as to form a correct 
judgment upon them." A comprehension of the great 
events of history, of their causes, results, and relations, is 
more important than the verbatim memorizing of pages 
of text-books. 

Method. — Questions for written examinations should 

be confined strictly to leading events and should include 

very few dates. In part, assign lessons by topics, and 

allow pupils to recite in their own language. Close the 

text-book yourself, and you will be better satisfied with 

the answers of pupils. Supplement the dry, condensed 

statements of the text-book by anecdotes, incidents, 

stories, and biographical sketches of noted men, drawn 

from your own memory or from books. 

In his Essentials of Method, De Garmo sums up the serious 
defects in the teaching of history as follows : " History, like geography, 
records a wilderness of facts. If our analysis of right methods is 
correct, these facts should be grouped, not only so that they may be 
remembered, but so that the lessons they should teach may appear in 
the consciousness of the learner. This is true, not alone of the ethical 
lessons with which history always abounds, but also of the immediate 
ends for which men struggle. When the objective point for which a 



268 APPLIED PEDACOGTCS 

war, a campaign, or a battle is conducted is once understood, it be- 
comes a beacon-light by which the meaning of every movement may 
be examined. Historical facts are then vitally related and easily re- 
membered. But to require an unthinking memorizing of facts, to im- 
part a knowledge of whose rational connection and significance de- 
pends upon accident, and whose application never appears, is to pursue 
a method as uni)edagogical as it is easy." 

Outlines of the World's History. — There seems to be 
no good reason why pupils in the grainmar school should 
not learn something about the history of the world. By 
means of oral lessons many thoughtful teachers are giving 
their pupils general outlines of the great events of the 
past. There are many more who would give such lessons 
were they authorized to do so by the course of study. 
There are many educators who would welcome the ap- 
pearance of a small handbook of general history suited 
to the needs, not of high-school pupils, but of boys and 
girls in the highest grade of the common schools. 



CHAPTER IX 

NATURAL METHODS IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 

The following rough outlines of a course by grades 
consists chiefly of practical hints and suggestions about 
modern methods now generally pursued in teaching this 
subject. 

SECOND AND THIRD GRADES OR YEARS. 

Oral Lessons. — As no text-books are used by pupils 
in these grades, oral instruction must be given by the 
teacher. In accordance with psychological method, a 
beginning should be made by a study of that small part 
of the earth which children see daily at school or at home. 
Pupils should be taken to some good points of view near 
the schoolhouse and their attention directed to such 
natural divisions of land and water as they can there 
see. In this way pupils may be made familiar with hill, 
mountain, valley, plain, brook, river, etc. They can make 
a real study that will fill their minds with pictures which 
may afterwards be used in forming conceptions of things 
that are represented by pictures, or described in words. 

The attention of pupils should be called to the phe- 
nomena of day and night, sunrise and sunset, the sun, 
moon, and stars, clouds, wind, dew, rain, frost, snow, and 
ice. This will set them to thinking about the causes of 
what they observe. They should begin to collect speci- 
mens of plants, and to learn the names of trees that grow 

in the neighborhood of the school. If there is a mill, or 

269 



270 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



factory or blacksmith's shop in the vicinity, the class should 
be taken on a visit to it. In rural schools, pupils should 
make out lists of all the food products grown on the farms 
of the neighborhood, lists of the birds in the vicinity, of 
the occupations by which the people earn their living, etc. 

The importance of this kind of introductory teaching is emphasized 
by M. Elisee Reclus as follows : *• Certainly we must always take as a 
starting-point what the child sees ; but does he see nothing more than 
the school and the village ? That is the tip of his abode ; he also sees 
the infinite heavens, the sun, stars, and moon. He sees the storms, 
the clouds, the rain, the distant horizon, the mountains, the hills, the 
downs or simple undulations, and the trees and shrubs. Let him 
attentively notice all these things, and let them be described to him. 
This is real geography, and to learn the child has not to go beyond 
the things which surround him, and which are exhibited to him in 
their infinite variety." 

Further than this, a few lessons may be given in connection with 
the school globe, showing the shape of the earth, the rotation of the 
earth, the continents and the oceans. 

Helps for Teachers. — Among numerous good books for use by 
teachers there is one that reaches the high-water mark of modern 
elementary instruction in geography — Red way and Hinman's Na- 
tural Elementary Geography. Suggestive exercises for beginners 
will be found in Geographical Nature Studies by Frank Owen Payne, 
and in McMurry's Special Course in Geography. 

FOURTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

In this grade a Primary Geography is usually placed in 
the hands of pupils, though in some schools, the use of 
a text-book is postponed until the fifth year. The intro- 
ductory pages of local geography will naturally be suc- 
ceeded by special oral lessons on town, city, and state 
geography, and by an extension of the nature study 
begun in previous grades. Pupils should now begin to 
study maps and to draw rough outlines. The wall-maps 



NATURAL METHOD IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 27 1 

most needed for school use will be a county map, a state 
map, the United States, North America, and the hemi- 
spheres. A little modeling with clay or sand is desirable 
if conditions and surroundings are favorable. 

The inductive lessons on home and state geography 
must soon be followed by a general view of the earth as a 
whole, its great natural divisions of land and water, its im- 
aginary divisions, and some of its political divisions. The 
psychological or inductive method must be carried along 
with the logical or formal method. Pupils must now 
begin to pass from the home-world of direct perception 
to a broader world, pictured in imagination after a study 
of maps, descriptions, and pictorial representation. 
Teachers should take great pains in training pupils how 
to study text-book lessons. No intelligent teacher will 
follow the old method of requiring pupils to memorize in 
detached lessons, the entire text-book. There are some 
things in the text-book that should be memorized, but 
much of the text is only to be read, or to be used for ref- 
erence. The skill of the teacher will be shown by a wise 
grouping of important things. The work to be done must 
necessarily be determined, in part, by the kind of a text- 
book in use. 

Out-of-door Studies. — If possible, pupils should be 
taken on excursions to points of interest in the neighbor- 
hood, or the surrounding country. They must be shown 
how to study the plants and animals which they see with 
their own eyes ; to observe the farms, gardens, shops, 
factories, and the industrial pursuits of the people among 
whom they live. De Garmo says : " Geographical instruc- 
tion must, above all, stimulate the creation of vivid 
mental pictures which shall come close to the reality. To 
awaken and to form pictures of the imagination must be 



272 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



considered the great purpose of geography, however dif- 
ficult the task may be." 

Helps for Teachers — Redway and Hinman's Natural 
Elementary Geography. 

FIFTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

The study of local state geography should be a con- 
tinuation and extension of the work of the preceding 
grade. In accordance with the arrangement of most text- 
books, it will be advisable for the class to take up the 
study of North America as a whole, and of the United 
States as a whole, and by sections. 

Map Drawing. — Special attention should be given to 
the proper study of maps, and to map-drawing. In gen- 
eral, blackboard map-drawing in the rough is better than 
labored drawings with pen or pencil. Map-drawing 
should not be made a hobby ; kept within due limits, the 
exercise is good, but it often runs into a waste of time 
and labor. Let pupils draw upon the blackboard, from 
the open book, on a large scale, an outline map of their 
own state, and, if possible, of their own country. Then 
them let outline the grand divisions. Finally require them 
to outline off-hand, from memory. The school globe 
should be used to enable pupils to form a correct idea of 
the relative position on the earth of the continents and 
oceans represented on maps. Clay modeling if practicable. 

What to Omit. — As school geographies are designed 
for use in all parts of our country, they are necessarily 
crowded with details to meet the wants of each state or 
locality. The sensible teacher will omit all that belongs 
to the local or special geography of states other than that 
in which the pupils reside. Do not expect children to 



NATURAL METHOD IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 27 X 

know more of a lesson than you remember without re- 
ferring to the text-book. If you forget details, it is a sure 
sign that your pupils will forget them, and therefore it is 
best not to require such details to be learned at all. 

If oral lessons in history are given to pupils, or if some 
book of history stories is used for supplementary reading, 
it is hardly necessary to suggest that all places of early 
settlement in our country, or other places marked by im- 
portant events should be located on the map. 

In addition to North America and the United States, 
it is desirable that there should be some study of Europe, 
on account of our commercial relations with European 
countries. Special attention should be given to the Brit- 
ish Isles. If the Primary Geography is to be completed 
in this grade, a few general lessons will be required on 
South America, Asia, and Africa. For reference and 
reading. Carpenter's Geographical Reader — North 
America. 

SIXTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

In this grade pupils generally begin the use of the 
larger or complete text-book. Some attention must be 
given to the introductory lessons and to the outlines of 
mathematical and physical geography. The United 
States should be taken up by groups or sections. 

Main Points. — Pupils are not expected to learn the 
boundaries of all the states nor even to name all the capitals. 
But they should be able at the end of the year to name 
the leading products of each group of states ; to locate 
from two to five of the chief cities in each group, and to 
locate the chief rivers of commercial importance. Also 
to name the chief mountain ranges and the most impor- 
AM. PUB. scH. — 18 



274 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

tant rivers of the United States as a whole, and to name 
the leading industries of each group of states. 

Special Topics. — The major topic of the class should 
be the geography of Europe. The following are a few 
among many special topics to be studied by pupils : 

(rt) London, as the center of the world's commerce. 
{b) Glasgow, for building iron ships. 
(^) Manchester, as a typical manufacturing center. 
i^d) Paris, the city of arts, 
(^) The scenery of Switzerland. 
(/) The scenery of the Rhine, 
(j^) Rome and its architecture. 

(/z) The Mediterranean Sea, its commercial and historical impor- 
tance, etc. 

SEVENTH GRADE OR YEAR. 

The work in this grade should include a general study 
of Asia, Africa, South America, Australia, and the island 
groups of the Pacific. The main topics for Asia will be 
British India, China, and Japan ; of Africa, the gold and 
diamond mines of South Africa, Egypt, the Nile, the 
pyramids, and ruined temples; of South America, the 
Andes, the Amazon, Brazil, Chili, Peru, and the Argen- 
tine Republic ; of Australia, its peculiar animals and 
plants, its gold mines, and stock farms. 

EIGHTH AND NINTH YEARS. 

Some time should be given to a detailed study of the 
political geography of the United States. The main work 
should include a special study of physical geography, and 
of the commercial relations of different countries. Teach- 
ers will find The Natural Advanced Geography, by 
Redway and Hinman (1898), a desirable guide in teaching 



NATURAL METHOD IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 



275 



geography in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, sup- 
plemented by any other modern text-books at hand. 

HINTS AND SUGGESTIONS ON METHODS. 

Value. — Geography is a treatment of man's material 
relations to the earth on which he dwells. It is an intro- 
duction to the political, industrial, commercial, and social 
relations of mankind. It is a medium through which 
pupils can be led into elementary science work. It is an 
important aid in the study of history. William T. 
Harris says, in the report of the Committee of Fifteen 
(1895) : ''About one fourth of the material relates strictly 
to the geography ; about one half to the inhabitants, 
their manners, customs, institutions, industries, produc- 
tions ; and the remaining fourth to mineralogy, meteor- 
ology, botany, zoology, and astronomy." 

Method. — During the past ten years there has been a 
marked advance in the general method of teaching ele- 
mentary geography. In the latest school text-books the 
subject is introduced in a psychological manner, that is, 
by directing the attention of children to the phenomena 
of earth, air, and water, about which they already know 
something. Topography has been simplified, and more 
space is given to the industrial and commercial relations 
of mankind, and to the fauna and flora of the earth. 

In criticising the common method of teaching geography, De Garmo 
says in Essentials of Method : " But perhaps the most serious fault 
of the current methods of teaching geography is, that the child is not 
taught to look within and beyond the individual fact he learns. The 
subject remains in its individual stage. There is no passing from in- 
dividual to general notions, no application of geographical principles 
to new particulars. For this reason, no geographical fact appears to 
have more than a momentary and accidental relation to any other. 



2/6 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

Facts are learned only to be forgotten, or to lie in the soul isolated 
and devoid of significance." 

Essentials. — It is essential that teachers should keep 
clearly in view the main things which ought to be learned 
so well that they will be retained for life. These should 
be welded into a chain of relations and associations. For 
instance, it is important for pupils to connect history 
with geography by learning the geographical situation of 
places marked by events of great historical importance. 
It is evident that pupils should know the location of cities 
and countries most frequently mentioned in newspapers 
as they report the daily history of the world. It is evi- 
dent that the geography of Europe is vastly more im- 
portant than the geography of Africa, South America, or 
Asia. It is important to know something about the great 
trade centers of our country, such as New York, Chicago, 
Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, etc. ; it is unimpor- 
tant to know the exact location of Timbuktu, Haidar- 
abad, Ujiji, or Chingtu. 

Natural Science. — As about one fourth of the matter 
in school text-books on geography relates to botany, 
zoology, mineralogy, meteorology, and astronomy, it is 
evident that lessons in geography are closely connected 
with lessons in natural science. The disconnected facts 
as they appear in the description of the plants and 
minerals of different countries must be gathered into con- 
nected groups in the lessons on nature study. The cor- 
relation of geography and history is self-evident and needs 
only to be mentioned. 

Examinations. — In schools where promotions from 
one grade to another are made by means of written ex- 
aminations, the questions given by principals or superin- 
tendents will of necessity mainly determine the kind of 



NATURAL METHOD IN TEACHING GEOGRAPHY 277 

instruction which will be given by teachers. If the 
questions are chiefly on unimportant details, the teaching 
will run in that direction, and all hope of reform will be 
vain. 

The Modern View. — In a recent paper read before a meeting of the 
Chicago school principals (1898), Colonel Parker said: " The most 
essential truth in modern psychology is the doctrine of apperception, 
which is that every image consists of an expansion and concentration 
of images already in the mind ; that fundamental images are gained 
through the senses ; and the function of the text-book is the union of 
such images into wholes. The best schoolhouse on earth is out of 
doors. Descriptions of things cannot take the place of actual contact 
with the reality. The line of progress in the future must have its root 
in out-door work. Field excursions have a stimulating influence. 
Children must see the animal in its habitat, the tree with its surround- 
ings, must feel the earth under their feet. The history of the earth is 
written in its surface — erosion of river valleys, the making and mix- 
ing of soils, the washing of the surface, and countless other interest- 
ing and profitable problems are ours to study. A child must go 
through the same process eventually in arriving at truth as scientists 
do, though he may be so guided that his line of resistance is shorter, 
but human development has forever the same laws, and at the base of 
these laws is the great one of self-activity." 

" It is extraordinary," says President Eliot, " what interest and train- 
ing power are imparted to geography simply by the addition of one 
means, namely, photographs of scenery. There is no point in refer- 
ence to the formation of plains and plateaus, of mountains and valleys, 
of lakes and rivers, which cannot be beautifully illustrated by photo- 
graphs. I say, therefore, that the grammar school of the future will 
have within its walls a large assortment of models, charts, maps, 
globes, and photographs for the teaching of geography." 



CHAPTER X 

THE NATURAL METHOD IN NATURE STUDIES 

Nature study was begun in the schools of this country 
in the form of " object lessons," introduced from the 
schools of England. These lessons partook largely of 
English formalism. As indicated by the early text-books, 
the leading aim was to crowd great masses of " facts " 
upon children. In the Oswego normal school the method 
was made successful by Mr. Sheldon, and in the city of 
New York, by Mr, Calkins. But in the hands of unskilled 
teachers object lessons often became a dead formalism. 
Still they led up to nature study which, during the past 
ten years, has been so generally pressed upon the atten- 
tion of teachers. 

The desirability, not to say the necessity, of beginning 
in the earliest years of school life some course of instruc- 
tion in nature study is now generally recognized and 
acted upon. It is impracticable to mark out definitely 
any course adapted to the diverse conditions of differ- 
ent schools. 

One teacher will make a special study of plant life ; an- 
other, of animal life ; a third may choose metals and 
minerals ; a fourth, physics. Whatever line of work is 
taken will prove profitable, if it is patiently carried out 
in a spirit of scientific observation and investigation. 
The elaborate courses that are successfully carried out in 
the small classes of normal training schools will fail in the 

crowded classes of city primary schools. The needs of a 

278 



THE NATURAL METHOD IN NATURE STUDIES 279 

small country school having all grades of pupils and only 
one teacher are widely different from the wants of city 
classes. All that I purpose to do, therefore, is to offer 
a few hints, and make a few rough outlines which may 
possibly be of some use to teachers that attempt to lead 
their pupils in the paths of nature study. 

FIRST AND SECOND GRADES OR YEARS. 

From some suitable book on nature study select a few 
lessons and read them to the children, or better still, learn 
the lessons and tell the story in your own words. In 
season, plant in flower-pots a few sweet-peas, beans, and 
grains of wheat, etc., and let the children watch their 
growth. Give, occasionally, an object lesson on fruits and 
flowers. If you take the Primary School Journal, select 
from it such exercises as you find available. Start con- 
versation lessons about frogs and fishes. If possible, take 
the children where they can see live frogs and fishes in 
their native element. 

Within the last few years, there have been published 
large numbers of nature stories and nature studies, de- 
signed to meet the needs of children in primary grades. 
They have been written, in general, by teachers engaged 
for years in instructing young children. They are charm- 
ing in style and in illustration. They are also psycho- 
logical in general method. Secure some of these inex- 
pensive books and study them as models for your own 
oral lessons. If you have little or no time for preparing 
oral lessons, begin your work by reading short extracts 
from some one of these books. In time you will become 
interested in your work, and will make up your own ex- 
ercises. 



28o APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

THIRD AND FOURTH GRADES. 

Plant Life. — Ask the children to plant at home, in 
flower-pots, boxes, or garden beds, peas, beans, wheat, and 
corn. Ask them to make a memorandum of the date of 
planting, and of the date when they come up, and re- 
port in writing to the teacher. Then ask them to make, 
once a week, a rough drawing of the appearance of each 
plant, and hand it in to the teacher. It will add to the 
interest of this lesson if the teacher will plant a few of the 
same kinds of seeds, dig up one, from time to time, and 
show pupils the progress of germination. Take into 
school specimens of plants, leaves, and flowers, distribute 
them to pupils, and show them how to make a study of 
them. Let pupils begin to make rough outline sketches 
of leaves, plants, and flowers from objects. The teacher's 
desk should be supplied with an inexpensive magnifying 
glass, to be used by pupils, or children should be en- 
couraged to buy glasses for themselves. Set the pupils 
to observing forms of plant life in the gardens and fields. 
Ask them to bring in lists of all kinds of trees they can 
find, etc. 

The teacher will do well to use as a handbook, Bailey's First Les- 
sons with Plants. In this little volume. Professor L. H. Bailey, of 
Cornell University has fully sustained his reputation as the author of 
numerous books on horticulture and agriculture, and of the school 
bulletins on plant life that have been so widely distributed among the 
common schools in the state of New York. In his preface to this 
book the author remarks that the lessons are designed to awaken an 
interest in plants and in nature rather than to teach botany. When 
the teacher thinks chiefly of his subject, he teaches a science ; when 
he thinks chiefly of the pupil, he teaches nature study. Mr. Bailey 
sets forth four chief requisites in nature study if the pupil is to catch 
inspiration from it : 

*' ( I ) . The subject itself must interest the pupil. This means that the 



THE NATURAL METHOD IN NATURE STUDIES 28 1 

instruction begins with the commonest things, with those whicli are 
actually a part of the pupil's life. 

" (2). The pupil must feel that the work is his, and that he is the in- 
vestigator. 

" (3) . Little should be attempted at a time. One thought or one sug- 
gestion may be enough for one day. The suggestion that insects 
have six legs is sufficient for one lesson. We obscure the importance 
of common things by cramming the mind with facts. When the pupil 
is taught to take systematic notes upon what the teacher says, it is 
doubtful if the lesson is worth the while, as nature study. 

" (4). The less rigid the system of teaching and the fewer the set 
tasks, the more spontaneous and, therefore, the better, is the result. A 
codified system of examinations will choke the life out of nature 
study." 

Animal Life. — Observation studies on bees, or ants, 
or butterflies, first, at home, or in field or garden ; after- 
wards, in school. In season, secure a few cocoons and let 
the children watch the transformation of the chrysalis into 
a butterfly. In tadpole season, ask the boys to catch a 
few polliwogs and bring them to school in a glass jar 
filled with water. Then set the whole class on the watch 
to see the wonderful transformation of the tadpole into 
a frog. 

Miscellaneous. — Take incidental lessons on various 
kinds of fruits, in season ; on the thermometer and the 
weather changes of heat and cold, rain and snow, winds 
and clouds, etc. On the moon and its phases; on iron, 
gold, and coal, etc. Rough outline drawings of suitable 
objects under investigation. Read to pupils nature stories 
from selected books, and afterwards lend the books to the 
children. If possible, take your class out into city parks 
or country fields and woods to study nature at first hand. 

FIFTH AND SIXTH GRADES. 
Plant Life. — Special study of a few common wild flow- 



282 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

ers, such as : the violet, buttercup, and wild rose ; of the 
blossoms of fruit trees, such as : the apple, peach, pear, 
and plum ; the growth of plants, etc. As a handbook 
use Bailey's First Lessons with Plants. 

Animal Life. — Typical specimens of radiates and mol- 
lusks, such as : the star-fish, the clam, or the oyster ; in- 
sect life, such as bees or ants ; bird life, as shown by the 
birds of the neighborhood. 

Metals and Minerals. — Short lessons on common rocks 
such as granite, sandstone, marble, slate, etc. ; metals such 
as iron, copper, lead, etc. Encourage pupils to begin the 
collection of a school cabinet. Observation lessons in 
connection with geography. 

Physiology and Hygiene. — Rules of health in respect 
to wholesome food, pure air, and personal cleanliness. 
Effects of narcotic and alcoholic stimulants. 

SEVENTH TO NINTH GRADES. 

Plant Life. — As a guide to pupils who are to be put 
to a real study of nature, the teacher will do well to use 
Bailey's Lessons with Nature, which is the larger book 
of which the First Lessons is an abridgment. For use 
in rural schools and as a library book this volume is un- 
equaled. The preface is in itself a good manual of sug- 
gestions. 

In connection with geography, the teacher can take up 
occasional lessons on the distribution of plant and animal 
life on the globe. The wise teacher will be in no haste 
to begin technical botany by classifying plants. First in 
order of study comes empirical knowledge ; afterwards 
scientific knowledg-e and nomenclature. Beginners store 
up facts by items, often in an indirect and desultory 



THE NATURAL METHOD IN NATURE STUDHZS 2cS^ 

manner. Mere text-book study of natural science, with- 
out observation and experiment by the pupils, is not 
knowledge. The real guide to true knowledge is a Jiabit 
of observing. Agassiz says, " The difficult art of thinking, 
of comparing, of discriminating, can be more readily ac- 
quired by examining natural objects for ourselves than in 
any other way." 

Physics. — The extent to which elementary lessons 
in physics can be carried depends upon conditions, but 
something can be done in any school. Experiments can 
be made with the simplest kind of improvised apparatus. 
Encourage pupils to make simple experiments at home or 
by themselves. 

Physical Geography. — Climatic zones and their effect 
on the distribution of animal and vegetable life. The 
sea and its inhabitants. Ocean currents and their effect 
on climate. 

Real Work. • — By well-put questions, set pupils to ob- 
serving the habits of animals and birds, of ants, bees, 
wasps, flies, and butterflies. Persuade them to buy a 
magnifying glass or a cheap microscope, and begin ex- 
amining things for themselves. If you wish to succeed, 
you must do the actual work of the naturalist, and must 
make your pupils do it. You must fit yourself to do this 
work by taking an interest in it. It is not at all necessary 
that you should be a specialist in botany, zoology, or 
natural philosophy ; but it is essential that you should 
know something about the true methods of the specialist. 
Taken up in the right spirit, instruction in the natural 
sciences can be made one of the most effective means of 
education. 

" The first teaching a child wants," says Huxley, " is an object- 
lesson of one sort or another ; and as soon as it is fit for systematic 



284 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



instruction, it is fit for a modicum of science. If not snubbed and 
stunted by being told not to ask foolish questions, tliere is no limit to 
the intellectual craving of a young child, nor any bounds to the slow 
but solid accretion of knowledge, and the development of the think- 
ing faculty in this way." 

Charles W. Eliot says in the Unity of Educational Reform : " Into 
the curricula of schools and colleges alike, certain new matters have 
of late vears been introduced, for teaching which the older methods 
of instruction — namely, the lecture and the recitation — proved to be 
inadequate, or even totally inapplicable. These new matters are 
chiefly object-lessons in color and form, drawing and modeling, 
natural sciences like botany, zoology, chemistry, physics, min- 
eralogy, and geology, and various kinds of manual training. In 
school and college alike the real effective teaching in all these sub- 
jects is that which is addressed to each individual pupil. The old- 
fashioned method of teaching science by means of illustrated books 
and demonstrative lectures has been superseded, from the kinder- 
garten to the university by the laboratory method, in which each 
pupil, no matter whether he be three years old or twenty-three, works 
with his own hands and is taught to use his own senses." 

Nature Study for Grammar Grades (1899), by Wilbur S. Jackman 
of the Department of Natural Science, Chicago Normal School, is an in- 
valuable book for teachers that desire to undertake substantial prac- 
tical work. The author in his preface sets forth general principles 
worth keeping clearly in mind. " That pupils need some rational 
and definite directions in nature study, all are generally agreed. But 
to prepare the outlines and suggestive directions necessary, and to 
place these within the reach of each pupil, is more than the ordinary 
teacher has time to do, even granting that she is fully prepared for such 
work. With a manual of directions in hand, each pupil may be made 
responsible for a certain amount of work, either in the field or in the 
laboratory. The author would suggest that the teacher assign a 
certain topic and then give appropriate opportunity for the pupils to 
study it, either in the field or in the laboratory, along the lines sug- 
gested in the book. After such study, the pupils will be prepared to 
meet in general class discussion, and the subsequent steps, drawing, 
painting, modeling, writing, etc., may follow in proper order." 

Helpful Books for Beginners. — Burt's Little Nature Stories for Little 
People ; Morley's Seed Babies ; Deane's Little Talks About Plants ; 



THE NATURAL METHOD IN NATURE STUDIES 



285 



Burt's Nature Stories— Plant Life and Animal Life ; Bailey's First 
Lessons With Plants ; Herrick's Chapters on Plant Life ; Kirby's 
Stories About Birds ; Miller's Little Brothers of the Air ; Andersen's 
Stories Mother Nature told her Children ; Strong's All the Year 
Round, Four Parts — Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter ; Johonnot's 
Feathers and Fur, and Claws and Hoofs ; Kelly's Short Stories of 
our Shy Neighbors. 

Helpful Books for Grammar Grades. — Bailey's Lessons with Plants 
(1898); Herrick's Chapters on Plant Life ; Needham's Outdoor Studies ; 
Burt's Birds and Bees (from John Burroughs) ; Newell's Reader in 
Botany, Vols. I and H ; Scudder's Life of a Butterfly; Seaside and 
Wayside Series, Vol. HI (for 4th and 5th Grades) ; Vol. IV 
(For 5th to 9th Grades) ; Dana's Plants and their Children (7th to 9th 
Grades). 

Reference Books for Teachers in Graded Schools. Mrs. L. L. Wilson's 
Nature Study in Elementary Schools ; Boydon's Nature Study 
by Months (1898) ; Jackman's Nature Study in Grammar Grades 
(1889); John Muir's Mountains of California; E. S. Thompson's 
Wild Animals that I have Known. 



CHAPTER XI 

MODERN VIEWS ON PHYSICAL CULTURE 

One of the most hopeful features of modern education 
is the growing recognition of the importance of physical 
training. It may be true that the leading purpose of the 
public school is intellectual training. It must be admitted 
that the physical condition of children depends, in part, 
upon home surroundings and inherited constitution. But 
though teachers have no direct control over pupils in 
respect to diet, clothing, exercise, rest, sleep, work, or 
play, they must not, on that account shirk their appro- 
priate share of responsibility in relation to the health and 
physical development of school children. 

Negative Duties. — There are certain negative duties 
which are self-evident. Teachers should at least protect 
their pupils against impure air, too long confinement, 
overwork, and the deadening effects of mental woriy, 
caused by severe competitive written examinations. A' 
great deal more than this ought to be done ; but in many 
schools not even this is attempted. Nevertheless it is 
the duty of teachers, whether in the primary, grammar, 
or high school, whether in city or country, to impress 
upon pupils, by emphatic iteration, the laws of health in 
relation to food, air, cleanliness, sleep, rest, exercise, play, 
work, and personal habits in general. President G. Stanley 
Hall, of Clark University, says in a paper on child study : ' 

1 llic ForiDfiy Dec, 1893. 

286. 



MODERN VIEWS ON PHYSICAL CULTURE 287 

" The juvenile world now goes to school and has its brain titil- 
lated and tattooed, and we have entirely forgotten that men have been 
not only good citizens but great, who were in Idyllic ignorance of 
even the belauded invention of Cadmus. Now, if this tremendous 
school engine, in which everybody believes now with a catholic con- 
sensus of belief perhaps never before attained, is in the least degree 
tending to deteriorate mankind physically, it is bad. Knowledge 
bought at the expense of health, which is wholeness or holiness it- 
self in its higher aspect, is not worth what it costs. Health condi- 
tions all the highest joys of life, means full maturity, national pros- 
perity. May we not reverently ask. What shall it profit a child if he 
gain the whole world of knowledge and lose his health, or what shall 
he give in exchange for his health ? That this is coming to be felt 
is seen in the rapidly growing systems of school excursions, school 
baths, school gardens, school lunches, provisions for gymnastics of 
the various schools, medical inspection, school polyclinics, all of 
which have been lately repeatedly prescribed and officially normalized. 
Not all, but many of these, are quite new. The assumption is that 
all must be judged from the standpoint of health, and that an edu- 
cational system must make children better, and not worse, in health." 

Systematic Drill. — It is sometimes said that systematic 
drill soon becomes irksome to children ; that boys dislike 
the gymnasium, and that girls find calisthenics wearisome ; 
that it is not natural for children to use wands and dumb- 
bells ; and that boys and girls should be left to follow 
their own inclinations and impulses about exercises and 
amusement. Now school drill is designed not to super- 
sede, but to supplement, the natural games and plays of 
children. In mental training, we recognize the principle 
that intellectual development is attained only by repeated, 
long-continued, and systematic exercises. Mental school 
gymnastics are rigidly enforced for many years. The 
same law holds true in physical development. Would not 
the physique of a class of boys under gymnastic training 
for ten years be superior to that of a class left to run wild ? 
And would not their accumulated stock of trained mus- 



288 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

cular power be quite as serviceable to them through life 
as a great deal of what is called mental discipline ? iVll 
the world's best workers know that success depends 
largely upon sound health and power of endurance. 
Sinewy frames as well as trained minds are essential to 
the sons of workingmen who have to make their own way 
in the world. For them muscular power means food, 
clothing, and a living. Their only capital in the struggle 
for existence is an elementary education and a sound 
body. " Health is the first wealth," says Emerson. 

Practical Suggestions. — In every school, whether in 
city or country, there should be given a daily drill of five 
or ten minutes in free gymnastics. Without apparatus 
and without music, a skillful teacher can secure very good 
results from what are termed, " free gymnastics," exe- 
cuted by counting in time. To these there may be added 
*' breathing exercises," and concert exercises in vocal 
culture or in singing. Both wands and dumb-bells can 
be used in any schoolroom. If there is a piano in the 
schoolroom, the light gymnastic drill can be made quite 
varied and thorough with no other appliances. 

Athletics. — The man who understands boys will either 
join with them, or will encourage and direct them in 
their games of baseball and football ; in boating, swim- 
ming, skating, coasting, and snowballing ; and will take 
an interest in their games of marbles, in kite-flying and 
top-spinning. On pleasant Saturdays, or after school 
in the long summer days, he will take his pupils on ex- 
cursions in the fields, woods, or hills after collections for 
the cabinet, or to see nature, or merely to have a good 
time. The woman who understands little children will 
invite them to pleasant walks with her for the same 
purpose. 



MODERN VIEWS ON PHYSICAL CULTURE 289 

Games and Plays. — The games of the primary children 
must not be forgotten. By a little attention to the play- 
ground, their sports may be regulated and made delight- 
ful. Marbles, tops, kites, balls, and hoops are all a part 
of educational apparatus. A visit to a kindergarten and 
a careful study of some kindergarten manual will be very 
suggestive in the direction of play and amusements. 
Teachers must study variety, for monotonous repetition 
soon becomes distasteful. Notice how marbles succeed 
tops, and kites follow ball, as often as the moon changes. 
The indirect lessons of the playground are often more 
valuable and more lasting than the formal teachings of 
the class-room. For it is in the hours of play, when off 
duty, that the teacher can best win the confidence and 
love of children. 

" From a health point of view," says Francis H. Tabor, " There 
can be no comparison between a good healthy game — in which 
every muscle is suitably exercised, and brain and lungs join in the 
complete happiness of the honest laugh and the careless shout — and 
the "dead alive" military drill, or formal gymnastics, which, while 
developing many muscles abnormally, leave the brain torpid and the 
spirit depressed. But the game must be regulated, if its full benefits 
are to be reaped. Unselfishness must be practised at every turn ; the 
strong must help the weak ; and the weak must be aroused, that they 
may not be a drag upon the strong. . , . The code of honor among 
true sportsmen is so rigid that truth and fair dealing become as im- 
portant as a well-balanced bat or sound ball. Manliness, energy, 
courage, endurance, all follow, not because they are said io be good, 
but because they seem to be good and a.Ytfelt to be absolutely essen- 
tial to the attainment of an object that is all in all to the boy." 1 

Manual Training as an Educational Factor. — The 

recent introduction of manual training into city schools 
marks a very important step in advance. The pioneer 

1 The Forum, May, 1899. 
AM. PUB. SCH. — 19. 



290 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



schools of manual training were founded and endowed 
by wealthy business men who desired to supplement 
the elementary education of the public schools by af- 
fording boys a technical training which would enable 
them to earn a living. The success of these schools at- 
tracted the attention of public school officials, and ex- 
periments were made by organizing classes, first in high 
schools and afterwards in the higher grades of grammar 
schools. 

Plan. — The plans, as carried out in Boston, Chicago, 
New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and many other 
cities, involve the introduction of woodwork, cooking, and 
sewing in the higher grammar grades, two hours a week 
being given to each subject. In 1896 manual training was 
an essential feature in the public school course of ninety- 
five cities. In the beginning, manual training was urged 
mainly as a special preparation for some industrial pur- 
suit, but now it is advocated as an important factor in a 
general education. Training in the use of tools in the 
shops leads to mental habits of careful attention. It leads 
to interest in drawing and the practical application of 
arithmetic and geometry. Indeed it seems to be doing 
for the grammar and the high school what kindergarten 
training does for the little children. 

" The best education has come from contact with nature," says Earl 
Barnes. " It is absurd to say that Abraham Lincoln was uneducated 
because he did not have the advantages of the schools. He was 
educated for the work of his life, ev^en if most of his clay work was 
done with a hoe, his wood work with an ax, his physics with a 
crowbar. A face-to-face struggle with nature has given the best men 
of the country to-day." 

The Report of the Commissioner of Education (1896- 
97) says: " Strong opposition was met among school- 



MODERN VIEWS ON PHYSICAL CULTURE 291 

men for a time, but manual training has steadily grown 
in popularity, and, with its growth, it has constantly im- 
proved in matter and method, and consequently in use- 
fulness." In this Report the statistics and courses of in- 
struction are given of 66 manual and industrial training 
schools and 24 industrial schools for Indian children. 

On the pedagogical value of manual training Professor 
William James, of Harvard, writes in a recent article as 
follows : ^ 

" The most colossal improvement which recent years have seen in 
secondary education lies in the introduction of the manual training 
schools ; not because they will give us a people more handy and 
practical for domestic life and better skilled in trades, but because 
they will give us citizens with an entirely different intellectual fiber. 
Laboratory work and shop work engender a habit of observation, a 
knowledge of the difference between accuracy and vagueness, and an 
insight into nature's complexity and into the inadequacy of all abstract 
verbal accounts of real phenomena, which once wrought into the mind 
remain there as life-long possessions. They confer precision ; be- 
cause if you are doing a thing, you must do it definitely right or de- 
finitely wrong. . . . They beget a habit of self-reliance ; they keep the 
interest and attention always cheerfully engaged, and reduce the 
teacher's disciplinary functions to a mininum." 

'^ Atlantic Monthly, March, 1899. 



CHAPTER XII 

MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 

While intellectual training is made, in practice, the most 
prominent object of the public school, the importance of 
moral training is universally acknowledged. ** The vital 
part of human culture," says William Russell, " is not 
that which makes a man what he is intellectually ; but 
that which makes him what he is in heart, life, and char- 
acter." 

Indirect Training. — Now there is no doubt that the 
strict discipline of the public school is in itself a powerful 
means of indirect moral training. Pupils are trained to 
habits of order, silence, regularity, punctuality, industry, 
truthfulness, obedience, and a regard for the rights of 
others. The influence of school, continued for a series of 
years, in these respects, is very powerful in the formation 
of habit and character. But beyond these incidental and 
indirect results, what is it possible for the schools to ac- 
complish in the way of moral development ? 

There are some who believe that there can be little or no 
moral culture unless it is given in connection with author- 
itative religious instruction in creed or catechism. But 
at present in our public schools, by law or by custom, 
purely secular instruction is the rule ; religious exercises, 
other than the reading of the Bible, are the exception. 
In so far, then, as moral training is connected with relig- 
ious instruction, the matter must be left to the home, the 

Sunday-school; and the church. What remains to be 

292 



MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 293 

done in the public school, and how shall it best be ac- 
complished ? While there are many who seem to think 
that nothing whatever can be done, except indirectly, 
there are others who believe that much may be accom- 
plished by direct training and instruction. 

Motive. — If moral training consisted merely in telling 
children what is right or wrong, or in dealing out maxims 
and proverbs ; if it would make children truthful and 
honest to learn commandments by rote, — then the teach- 
er's task would indeed be an easy one. But moral culture 
concerns the feelings, the emotions, the will, the con- 
science. Hence the successful teacher must be a trusted 
friend and guide, not a mere bundle of philosophical 
ethics. The moral nature must be called into daily exer- 
cise until habits of right-thinking result in habits of right- 
doing. And this process of development is slow and al- 
most imperceptible. 

** Whatever moral benefit can be effected by education," 
says Herbert Spencer, '* must be effected by an education 
that is emotional rather than perceptive. If, in place of 
making a child understand that this thing is right and the 
other wrong, you make it feel that they are so ; if you 
make virtue loved and vice loathed ; if you arouse a noble 
desire and make torpid an inferior one ; if you bring into 
life a previously dormant sentiment ; if you cause a sym- 
pathetic impulse to get the better of one that is selfish ; 
if, in short, you produce a state of mind to which proper 
behavior is natural, spontaneous, instinctive — you do 
some good." 

Methods. — Methods of conducting moral lessons in 
school must be gathered up by experience and observa- 
tion. A warm heart, a genial nature, an even temper, a 
beaming eye, a cheerful countenance, a sincere voice, 



294 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



an earnest manner — these are the potential agencies by 
which you can win, direct, and control young pupils. 
Teachers should keep fresh in mind their own feelings, 
passions, emotions, impulses, sympathies, and experiences 
when they were children, and thus avoid the grievous 
mistake of applying to school children the moral philos- 
ophy suited only to adult metaphysicians. Children 
should not only be taught what is right ; they must also 
be made to do what is right. The school is a miniature 
world ; in one way or another it affords opportunities for 
the practice of most of the moral virtues. Strict discipline 
trains pupils to habits of obedience and order, corrects 
bad habits, and compels the lawless to respect the rights 
of others ; but in addition to this it is possible for a 
teacher to breathe into a school a spirit of honor, truth- 
fulness, and honesty which will put down profanity, 
vulgarity, slang, slander, tattling, lying, and meanness 
generally. 

Stories and Books. — One of the most effective ways 
of giving moral lessons is by reading or telling to pupils 
stories or anecdotes illustrating some virtue to which the 
teacher desires to call attention ; such as honor, truthful- 
ness, courage, or honesty. " Stories of great and noble 
deeds," says Bain, *' have fired more youthful hearts with 
enthusiasm than sermons have." If there is a school 
library, make good use of it by calling the special atten- 
tion of pupils to the biographies and story books that 
you think best fitted to become your assistants in moral 
development. The high ideals presented in good books 
will result in a rich harvest of noble sympathies and right 
actions. Weems' Life of Washington was one of the few 
books that fell into the hands of Abraham Lincoln when 
he was a boy living in a log cabin ; who can estimate the 



MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 295 

1 high ideals which this patriotic book, in spite of its exag- 
gerated rhetoric, suggested to this soHtary boy, as he 
pored over it by the Hght of the open fireplace ? Though 
Lincoln owed little to school training, we cease to wonder 
at his character-development when we know that he read 
and re-read, at home, in early life, a select library consist- 
ing chiefly of the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, Plutarch, 
Washington, spelling book, reader, and arithmetic, and an 
old volume of the statutes of Illinois. 

Dr. George H. Martin, of Boston, in his unequaled ad- 
dress on " The Unseen Force in Character Making," said : ^ 
** Our boys and girls, all unknown to us, often uncon- 
sciously to themselves, are admiring the characters they 
find in the books they read, and are fashioning themselves 
into the same image. Through literature and history, 
there is no limit to the possibilities within the reach of 
every teacher. Character in history, character in liter- 
ature, illuminated in the portrayal by the enthusiastic 
admiration of the teacher, glows before the student and 
kindles within him a responsive emotion. As the long 
line of men and women who have lived, and wrought, and 
suffered moves before him, he feels nobler impulses stir- 
ring within him, and sees himself living such a life, and 
with the thoughts and impulses, the work of transforma- 
tion begins." 

One of the most valuable books for use by teachers of 
the higher grammar grades, or by teachers of country 
schools, is Thayer's Ethics of Success. It is the special 
excellence of this book that the moral lessons are not 
sermons or lectures, but inspiring anecdotes from the lives 
of successful men and women. 

1 Read at Columbus ; y^\x\:i\\%\vtdi'm\\\^ Journal of Education, March 
16, 1899. 



296 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



History. — By the new school of Herbartians, great 
stress is placed on history as a means of moral culture. 
The general term history is made to include, not only the 
formal text-book study of history, ancient and modern, 
in the higher grades, but, also, fables, myths, stories, tra- 
dition, biography, and poetry, for children in the lower 
grades. 

In McMurry's General Method, a book based on the principles of 
Herbart, the use of history in moral training is set forth as follows : 
" Although history has many uses, its best influence is in illustrating 
and inculcating moral ideas. It will strike most teachers with sur- 
prise to say that the chief use of history study is to form moral notions 
in children. Some of the best historical materials (from biography, 
tradition and fiction) should be absorbed by children in each grade 
as an essential part of the substratum of moral ideas. . . . Examples 
of moral action drawn from life are the only things that can give 
meaning to moral precepts. Moral ideas always have a concrete basis 
or origin. Some companion with whose feelings or actions you are 
in close personal contact, or some character from history or fiction by 
whose personality you have been strongly attracted, gives you your 
keenest impressions of moral qualities. To begin with abstract moral 
teaching, or to put faith in it, is to misunderstand children." 

De Garmo, in Essentials of Method, emphasizes the uses of 
history as follows : " For the reason, then, that we first grasp the 
general through the particular, all ethical instruction should proceed 
from individual cases of action involving a moral content. Hence it 
does not suffice to preach in school, except from the text of an actual 
event. Children can best get the first points of crystallization for 
moral truths from stories involving a moral content. Here the emo- 
tions are not unduly aroused, as they are likely to be where the action 
is one that touches them personally, so that the irrational nature of 
wrong action appeals to the understanding as well as to feeling. 
History fulfills its noblest mission to the race on account of its ethical 
content and of the individual nature of the presentation. Every deed 
of heroism, of benevolence, of charitv, of patriotism is a concrete em- 
bodiment of a precious virtue ; while every mean, cowardly, dastardly 
act is an individual protest against meanness, cowardice, or villainy. 



MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 297 

We can only continue the deposit about these starting-points until at 
last the soul is strong in itself to stand against temptation." 

Occasions. — Talks on morals should be given at the 
proper time and in the right way. The events of a school 
week will often furnish practical illustrations for a short 
but effective talk to the pupils on manners or morals. 
Omit no fitting occasion to impress a principle upon the 
moral feelings. 

Kindergarten Training. — It will be Avell for all 
thoughtful teachers to consider wiiat has been accom- 
plished in kindergarten schools in the way of molding 
the characters of little children, and of reforming the waifs 
gathered in from neglected homes. The annual reports 
of the Golden Gate Kindergarten Association written by 
the late Mrs. Sarah B. Cooper, the philanthropist of San 
Francisco, are filled with proofs of the possibilities of 
moral training at a very early age. In one of her reports 
(1891), she says : 

" During the twelve years we have had nearly nine thousand chil- 
dren under our care and training. The children who were with us in 
the earliest years of our work are now from fifteen to eighteen years of 
age. We have followed these children as closely as possible since they 
left us, and after the most rigid investigation we do not find our kin- 
dergarten children among the juvenile offenders. Their names are 
not to be found upon the police records ; and this, too, in face of the 
fact that our kindergartens are located in the districts where crimi- 
nals are made. We have perused every avenue of information, only 
to find one arrest for petty offenses among the 8,000 children that have 
attended the kindergartens during the last eleven years — and as he 
was a feeble-minded boy, with an inborn mania for setting fire to 
things, we counted him out entirely. He was deemed irresponsible, 
and placed in confinement to keep him from mischief." 

A Teacher's Testimony. — The following letter was 
written by Agnes M. Manning, who has been for many 



298 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

years principal of one of the largest primary schools of 
San Francisco, in answer to a letter of inquiry from my- 
self when City Superintendent of Schools : 

Dear Sir: I wish to tell you why I am so strongly in favor of kin- 
dergartens. My school is in a crowded neighborhood. I have many 
children from tenement-houses and from the narrow streets off Market 
street. Before the days of the kindergarten these children as soon as 
they could crawl, spent their waking lives on the sidewalks. From 
the age of two to six years they pursued the education of the street. 
The consequences were that at six they came to us with a fund of in- 
formation of the worst description, and a vocabulary that might excite 
the envy of the Barbary Coast. At the commencement of each new 
year they tumbled over each other in their rude haste to take up the 
unexplored life of a school. They were in tens, fifties, hundreds in 
our yards. The novelty being past, the hard struggle commenced of 
keeping them from joining the army of truants, and leading them into 
habits of work and cleanliness. . . . The kindergartens have changed 
all this. They have taken the babies that used to be consigned 
to the curbstone, trained and guided them along a path of develop- 
ment. They have wisely attempted no cramming of the infant brain 
with premature scholarship. They have surrounded the young lives 
with a fresh atmosphere. They have passed the hours in pleasant 
games, taught a purer language, and led the little feet into a new civ- 
ilization. The children of tenement-houses and narrow streets still 
come in tens, fifties, and hundreds to begin life in a new school at the 
beginning of each school year. The little ones are clean, self-respect- 
ing, eager for knowledge. They have opinions of their own on many 
things, and are quite anxious to express them. They neither know 
how to read nor write. They have been taught to see, to observe, to 
tell about what they see and hear. They have been taught to respect 
older people, to be honest, to tell the truth. It is a rare thing now to 
find a child that does not know it is wrong to steal. If you meet one 
you may be sure he has never been in a kindergarten." 

Character. — The exercise of good principles, confirmed 
into habit, is the true means of forming a good character. 
Children do not learn arithmetic and grammar merely by 



MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS 299 

repeating rules and formulas ; neither will they apperceive 
and assimilate the foundation principles of right and 
wrong as rules of action merely by the process of repeat- 
ing mottoes and maxims. The moral faculties are of 
slow growth ; they need daily culture and exercise until 
habits of right-thinking and right-doing are formed. There 
are evil tendencies in the child's nature to be repressed ; 
there are germs of good qualities to be warmed into life 
and quickened in their growth. Canon Farrar says : 
" Plant a fleeting fancy and you reap a thought ; plant a 
thought and you reap an action ; plant an action and you 
reap a habit ; plant a habit and you reap character ; plant 
a character and you reap a destiny.'' 

The practical teacher who has begun to make a direct 
study of children at first hand will find occasion to make 
use of the doctrine of interest and desire as set forth by 
the Herbartian school of thinkers, as well as the creed of 
duty and the ivill expounded by the Hegelian school of 
philosophers. In the kindergarten and the primary grades 
children will be won by sympathy, influenced by desire, and 
stimulated by interest. In succeeding stages of develop- 
ment, as good habits are strengthened, and higher ideals 
are created, character begins to be formed, conscience is 
developed, and duty becomes more and more a controlling 
power. 

" The development of the character," says Dr. Jordan, " is the for- 
mation of the ego. It is in itself the co-ordination of the elements of 
heredity, the bringing into union of warring tendencies and irrelevant 
impulses left us by our ancestors. The child is a mixture of imper- 
fectly related impulses and powers. It is a mosaic of ancestral hered- 
ity. Its growth into personality is the process of bringing these ele- 
ments into relation to each other. 

" Doing right becomes a habit if it is pursued long enough. It be- 
comes a second nature or a higher heredity. The formation of a 



300 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



higher heredity of wisdom and virtue, of knowing right and doing right, 
is the basis of character-building." 

William T. Harris, United States Commissioner of Education, 
closed a paper, read before the California State Teachers' Association 
(1896) with the following summary : 

" In closing, let us call up the main conclusions and repeat them in 
their briefest expression. 

" I. Moral education is a training in habits, and not an inculcation of 
mere theoretical views. 

"2. Mechanical disciplines are .indispensable as an elementary basis 
of moral character. * 

" 3. The school holds the pupil to a constant sense of responsibility, 
and thereby develops in him a keen sense of his transcendental free- 
dom ; he comes to realize that he is not only the author of his deed, 
but also accountable for his neglect to do the reasonable act. 

" 4. Lax discipline in a school saps the moral character of the pupil. 
It allows him to work merely as he pleases, and he will not reinforce 
his feeble will by regularity, punctuality and systematic industry. . , . 

" 5. Too strict discipline, on the other hand, undermines moral char- 
acter by emphasizing too much the mechanical duties, and especially 
the phase of obedience to authority, and it leaves the pupil in a state 
of perennial minority. He does not assimilate the law of duty and 
make it his own. The law is not written on his heart, but is written 
on lips only. He fears it but does not love it. 

6. The best help that one can give his fellows is that which enables 
them to help themselves. The best school is that which makes the 
pupils able to teach themselves. The best instruction in morality 
makes the pupil a law unto himself. Hence, strictness, which is indis- 
pensable, must be tempered by such an administration as causes the 
pupils to love to obey the law for law's sake." 

PRACTICAL SCHOOLROOM LESSONS. 

(i) Beginnings in First, Second, and Third Grades. — 

Talk to pupils about kindness to animals, particularly to 
dogs, cats, birds, and horses. Read extracts from " Black 
Beauty." Read short stories that have a moral wrapped 
up in them. 



MODERN TRAINING IN MORALS AND MANNERS -qi 

For Use by — Heart Culture, by Emma E. Page will 

prove a valuable assistant to teachers. The purpose of the author 
cannot be better expressed than by the following quotations from her 
preface : " The aim of this book is to teach kindness to animals by 
quickening sympathy for them, arousing a sense of justice toward 
them, and instilling the fundamental principles of right care of them. 
How to care for domestic animals is dwelt upon with considerable 
detail, because these things must be taught in school to get down into 
the family life of all the people. Not to know is often as cruel as not 
to care." 

Fourth and Fifth Grades — Topics for Short Talks. — Put everything 
in its right place. Why } Have a regular time for home study. 
Why } Be punctual at school. Why } Why is it your duty to study 
your lessons ? Kindness to children younger than yourself. Duties 
to other pupils. Duty to home and parents. Kindness to animals. 
Kindness to little children. 

For Reference by Teachers. — Dewey's Ethics or Stories of Home 
and School. Thayer's Ethics of Success, Book I. 

Sixth and Seventh Grades — Topics for Short Talks. — Topics may 
be brought before a class by reading some anecdote or story, or by 
means of conversation lessons. Fighting and quarreling. Calling 
nicknames. Truthfulness. Word of honor. Cheating. Promises. 
Profanity. Slang. Cruelty to animals. Courage. Duties at home. 
Duties in school. Duties to others. 

For Reference. — Thayer's Ethics of Success, Book H. 

Topics for Eighth and Ninth Grades. — Earning a living. The read- 
ing of good books. Economy. Patriotism. Obedience to law. 
Duties of American Citizens. 

For Reference. — Thayer's Ethics of Success, Book II. Everett's 
Ethics for Young People. 

HINTS ON LESSONS IN POLITENESS. 

" A beautiful behavior," says Emerson, " is the finest 
of the fine arts. Give a boy address and accomplishments 
and you give him the mastery of palaces and fortunes 
where he goes." 

It is too often assumed that children learn manners at 



302 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



home, or unconsciously acquire a polite behavior from 
their teachers, schoolmates, or friends. But whatever they 
may learn through unconscious tuition, it is very desirable 
that they should receive specific instruction in politeness. 
It is said that the winning manners of Henry Clay were 
owing in no small degree to the careful training in man- 
ners given him at an early age in a log schoolhouse in 

Virginia. 

Topics for Short Talks in Second and Third Grades. — Politeness to 
schoolmates. Politeness to teachers. Manners at the table. Polite- 
ness to parents. Politeness to brothers and sisters. 

For Reference. — How to Teach Manners in the Schoolroom, by- 
Julia Dewey. 

Topics for Short Talks in the Fourth Grade. — Manners at home ; at 
school; at places of amusement. Minor rules of politeness : (Adapted 
from Miss Dewey's How to Teach Manners in School.) 

1. When you pass directly in front of any one say " Excuse me." 

2. Never fail to say " Thank you " (not " Thanks ") for the smallest 
favors. 

3. When a schoolmate is reading, or is answering a question, do not 
raise your hand to correct a mistake until after he has finished. 

4. Do not stare at visitors who enter the schoolroom. 

5. When you stand to recite, stand erect like a well-bred gentleman 
or lady. 

6. In handing a pointer, pen, or pencil, hand the blunt end towards 
the person to whom you wish to pass it. 

7. It is impolite to chew gum or to eat in school. 

Fifth Year or Grade — Topics for Short Talks. — When you do a 
favor, do it cheerfully. A cheerful countenance is always welcome. 
Give up your seat to older people. Apologize to any one you have 
wronged. Do not bluntly contradict any one. Look persons in the 
eye when you speak to them. Whispering in company is impolite. 
Avoid the use of slang expressions. 

For Reference. — Gow's Primer of Politeness. 

Sixth to Eighth Grades — Topics for Short Talks. — Rules of polite- 
ness in society. Politeness to strangers. Politeness in traveling. 
How to write notes of invitation and acceptance of invitations. How 
to introduce persons in a proper manner. 



CHAPTER XIII 

COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 

It requires great tact and judgment to manage suc- 
cessfully a rural school in which the whole work is done 
by one teacher. In the graded schools of town and city 
the course of instruction is definitely laid down in printed 
manuals ; the work of each successive grade is directed 
by principal and superintendent ; the results are tested 
by written examinations ; and each class teacher is only 
a cog in a complicated system of wheels. But in the 
country school the teacher combines the function of as- 
sistant, principal, examiner, and superintendent. He is 
an autocrat, limited only by custom, precedent, and text- 
books. 

When we consider that about one half of the school 
children in our country receive their elementary education 
in rural schools, their importance as a part of our school 
system is obvious. Many of these schools in the sparsely- 
settled districts of some states are kept open only from 
three to six months in the year, and even then the at- 
tendance is irregular. The whole schooling of many 
children, from the age of five to fifteen, hardly amounts 
to five years of unbroken school attendance. For such 
pupils, what instruction will best fit children for their life 
duties ? What knowledge is of most worth to them ? 
The subject under consideration is so important that it 
seems to require special treatment by itself. As an axiom, 
we may safely take this statement of John Stuart Mill : 

303 



304 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



" The aim of all intellectual training for the mass of the 
people should be to cultivate common-sense." 

It is of the first importarice that pupils should be trained 
to speak, read, and write the English language. At fif- 
teen or sixteen years of age they should be able to read 
readily, to keep their conversation free from provin- 
cialisms in pronunciation, to write a letter in a neat and 
legible hand ; and they should have a taste for reading 
good literature. 

In arithmetic they should be trained to work examples 
in the '' four rules " ; to perform business operations in 
common and decimal fractions ; to reckon simple interest ; 
and to make out a bill, a receipt, and a promissory note ; 
and to keep simple accounts. Wise teachers will concen- 
trate their drill upon what the pupils most need. 

In geography they should acquire a general knowledge 
of our own country and of the world as a whole ; but it 
is not necessary that they should be compelled, term after 
term, and year after year, to memorize text-books. 
Present the subject in a natural way according to modern 
methods. Begin with a study of local geography from 
nature and proceed according to the methods presented 
in a previous chapter on geography in graded schools. 

The text-book study of grammar should be preceded 
by a course of elementary exercises in language les- 
sons, such as are found in the best modern text-books. 
Children cannot be trained to speak or write correctly by 
parsing according to Latinized formulas. They will 
never learn to construct a good sentence by analyzing 
complex or compound sentences, or by memorizing and 
repeating the rules of syntax, though this method be 
followed until they grow gray. Require, then, at least, 
one short composition exercise a week, upon subjects 



COMMON-SEySE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 305 

about which the pupils have learned something. Let 
them write about farming, about animals, birds, fishes, 
flowers, trees. Read them short stories to be reproduced 
in writing. Require pupils over eight years of age to 
write at least one short letter a week, until they can write 
it in due form, punctuate it, capitalize it, spell correctly 
most of the words they use in it, fold it neatly, and direct 
it properly. After this preliminary work is well done, 
let the older pupils study grammar from a text-book, by 
taking up a few essential points in etymology, by learn- 
ing to apply a few important rules of syntax, by taking 
a little parsing and a minimum of plain sentence analysis 
without diagrams, and with as little as possible of the 
scholastic forms of logic in which the subject is often 
enveloped. 

Pupils should acquire a general knowledge of the lead- 
ing events in the history of our own country. Teachers 
should present the subject by means of oral lessons, 
which will include stories, anecdotes, incidents, and well- 
selected extracts. Narrative and biography constitute 
the life of history to the young. A text-book may be 
used to supplement this work. 

It will be one of the pleasantest of duties to awaken 
country children to the beauties of nature by which they 
are surrounded. It is here that teachers may do their 
best work, by drawing out of pupils all they know of the 
world around them, and by encouraging every effort to 
increase their knowledge. Country boys and girls 
generally have a considerable stock of crude knowledge 
about animals, plants, and the phenomena of every-day 
life. Draw out these fragmentary stores of facts, and 
supplement them by the facts of science. Set the girls 
to collecting and pressing plants and flowers. Let the 
AM. PUB. scH. — 20 



3o6 APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

boys bring in specimens of minerals, shells, woods, and 
grains for a school cabinet. Open their eyes to the beauty 
of the world in which they live. 

In the Report of the Committee of Twelve on Rural Schools 
(1897), Wilbur S. Jackman, of the Chicago Normal School, in a special 
paper on a course of study for rural schools, makes the following sug- 
gestions about nature study : 

" In the earlier years, especially, great attention should be given to 
the picturesqueness and natural beauty of the surroundings. Without 
trained and careful effort in this direction, the intensely practical char- 
acter of their contact with the various things about them will close the 
eyes of the children to many beautiful things that should be a source 
of joy and pleasure throughout life. Much out-door study should, 
therefore, be encouraged. The children should be familiar with every 
brook and waterfall ; \\ ith every cliff, wooded copse, and ravine." 

From personal experience I deeply realize the force of 
Mr. Jackman's suggestions. In my^ boyhood I attended 
a villaee school in one of the mountain towns of New 
Hampshire. From the schoolhouse door we could see, 
not two miles distant, a granite mountain which rose to 
the height of more than a thousand feet. Away in the 
distant western horizon Mt. Kearsarge rose still higher. 
At our feet, not a stone's-throw from the schoolhouse, 
there flowed the winding Suncook River, an important 
tributary of the Merrimac. But nature study was un- 
heard of when we boys went to school. None of us ever 
connected the mountains that we read about in the geog- 
raphy with the real mountains right before our eyes. 
We failed to assimilate the rivers traced in spider lines on 
the atlas with the clear-running stream in which we went 
a-swimming every day in the hot summer time. We 
boys never once thought of climbing to the summit of 
the mountain near by, though we could have reached it 
by a two hours' walk. No one of our teachers ever 



COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 307 

thought of suggesting to us that it would be a good geog- 
raphy lesson to find out what we could see from that 
familiar mountain top. We were blind as bats to the 
beautiful panorama of nature spread out everywhere 
around us. No teacher ever once in all our lives called 
our attention to the mountain, or the river, or the ponds, 
or the farms, or the woods, or the beauty of the landscape. 
It was only after an absence of many years in California, 
that my eyes were opened to the wondrous summer beauty 
of my native town, a landscape of hill and mountain, farm 
and forest, unequaled by anything that I had seen in my 
distant wanderings. Then I climbed to the top of Cata- 
mount and looked out on the scenery that tourists travel 
hundreds of miles to behold. I brought away with me, 
as a special treasure, a piece of quartz delicately grooved 
and polished by the great glacial ice-mass that once moved 
over New England and sculptured the rough outlines of 
the varied landscape spread out in all its wondrous summer 
beauty. 

In the appendix to the report of the Committee of Twelve there 
is a paper on " The Farm as the Center of Interest," by Col. Francis 
W. Parker, of the Chicago Normal School, which so graphically and 
truthfully sets forth the field for nature study in the country school 
that it cannot fail to prove an inspiration to all who read it. Among 
other things he says : " Nowhere on earth has a child such advantages 
for elementary education as upon a good farm, where he is trained to 
love work and to put his brains into work. The statement of what a 
farm does for a boy in its general lines may easily be taken from the 
experience of a farm boy in New England, for instance. It is possible 
for me to give the story of such a one from actual experience — what 
he learned, what he studied, and what he acquired. As soon as he 
found himself upon the farm, at eight years of age, he began to study 
— to study in the best sense of that much-abused word. He began 
the study of geography — real geography. He observed with ever- 
increasing interest the hills, valleys, springs, swamps, and brooks upon 



3o8 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



the old farm. The topography of the land was clear and distinct ; its 
divisions into fields, pastures, and forests were to him the commonest 
facts of experience. . . . He studies botany. All the kinds of grasses 
he knew — timothy, clover, red top, silver grass, pigeon grass ; how 
they were sown, how they came up, grew, were cut, cured, and fed to 
the cattle ; what kind of hay was best for sheep ; and what for oxen. 
He knew the trees, the maple with its sweet burden of spring, 
the hemlock, and the straight pine which he used to climb for crows' 
nests. He knew the wild animals, the squirrels, the rabbits, the wood- 
chucks ; the insects, the grasshoppers, and ants ; bugs- that scurried 
away when he lifted a stone. With the birds he was intimately 
acquainted. 

" He observed, investigated, and drew inferences, perfectly uncon- 
scious, to be sure, of what he was learning, or how he was learning ; 
but still, he learned, and he studied, and the best lesson of all was his 
personal reaction upon his environment. His plowing, hoeing, haying, 
digging, chopping, lumbering, his mending of sleds, and making of 
cider, sugar, lye, and soap were all so many practical lessons in life 
which exercised his body, stimulated his mind, and strengthened and 
developed his purpose in life. He lived to become a school teacher, 
and taught school earnestly and bunglingly for twenty years before he 
had even a suspicion of the value of his farm life and farm work." 

It is not necessary that you should teach ethics as a 
science. What pupils most need is that plain preceptive 
morahty which is diffused among the people as their daily 
rule of action. Your work here must be an outgrowth of 
your own life and character, observation and experience, 
combined with the best thoughts you can glean from 
books and society. 

It is desirable that pupils should know something about 
the laws of health in relation to diet, sleep, air, exercise, 
work, play, and rest. Teach the plain truth that sickness 
is the penalty of violated laws ; that bad habits are physical 
sins ; that poor health, unless hereditary, is the result of 
carelessness or ignorance. These things can be taught 
either with or without a text-book. 



COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 309 

Teach drawing in a natural way by giving pupils a few 
hints, and then setting them at work in trying to draw 
from real objects, such as leaves, fruits, flowers, animals, 
birds, ships, boats, houses, and easy landscapes. There 
is a fine opportunity in the country school for allowing 
pupils to follow their individual bent. Allow a reason- 
able time for singing, recitals, dialogues, the reading of 
compositions, and other incidental exercises. 

The arrangement and length of recitations are matters 
of judgment to be modified according to conditions. 
When one class is reciting, set the others about some 
specific piece of work at their desks. The few advanced 
pupils ought not to monopolize your attention. Assign 
older pupils lessons to be learned at home ; for children 
who attend a school only a part of the year cannot easily 
be overtaxed with brain work. Train them to depend 
upon themselves, and to find out things by hard thinking. 
In recitations, explanations and illustrations must be con- 
densed, for time is limited. 

If there is a school library, make good use of it by 
recommending suitable books for pupils to read at home. 
Many a dull boy, lazy and listless over his lessons, has 
been made alive by books suited to his age and capacity. 

If you have tact, good-nature, and firmness, and know 
how to interest children in their work, you need not have 
much trouble about order, discipline, or government. 
Win the good will of the older pupils, and they will be- 
come your assistants in school government. 

On the morning of the first day, that crucial test of a 
teacher, introduce yourself by a few cheerful remarks, 
distribute slips of paper on which pupils are to write their 
names, age, class or grade, and studies ; and, having col- 
lected these, proceed at once to business by giving out a 



3 TO APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 

sheet of paper to all who can use a pen, and require them 
to write a composition about their last vacation. This 
will keep them at work an hour at least, during which 
time you can attend to the little ones, and make out your 
rough program. The art of the first day is to keep pupils 
busy. You will avoid much mischief by getting every- 
body hard at work in ten minutes after school opens. If 
you know how to tell a good story, close school with one ; 
if not, read one from some book. 

The true economy of teaching in an ungraded school is 
to make the fewest possible number of classes, and to 
consider both age and capacity in making the classifica- 
tion. If the school is a large one, do not attempt to hear 
daily recitations in everything, but alternate the studies 
of the more advanced pupils. Economize time and in- 
struction by means of as many general exercises as possi- 
ble, in which all except the youngest pupils can join; such 
as drill exercises in the four rules of arithmetic, mental 
arithmetic exercises, the spelling of common words, short 
compositions, review questions on the leading facts of 
geography and history. Take an hour, weekly, for select 
readings, recitals, dialogues, and lessons on morals and 
manners. 

Occasionally give written examinations. In most city 
schools, written examinations are carried to extremes; 
but in most country schools there is not enough of writ- 
ten work to give readiness and exactness in the wTitten 
expression of thought. 

For a young teacher, whether man or woman, there is 
no better school of practice than a country school. Nor 
should the educational advantages of the rural school for 
pupils be underrated. In the long race of life, boys edu- 
cated in such schools often come out ahead of those 



COMMON-SENSE APPLIED TO RURAL SCHOOLS 



311 



ground out by the graded machinery of city schools. 
During a part of the year country boys work on the farm, 
and get, not only muscular strength, but also a habit of 
ivork. They go back to school with a keen relish for 
study, and a habit of steady application. Hard work on 
his father's farm, from sunrise to sunset, hoeing corn, or 
haying, or digging potatoes, has made school-life seem a 
play spell to many a boy, and has laid the foundation of 
steady habits that have led to success in life. The 
trouble with many city boys is that they have no work to 
do out of school, and never learn what hard labor means 
until school-life is over. Herein lies the great advantage 
of the country school ; both boys and girls have a com- 
bination of mental and manual training. The morn- 
ing and evening "chores" on the farm, and in the house- 
hold, prevent undue mental application. Pupils are not 
surfeited with school and books ; school, indeed, is a 
relief from hard labor. Many a man has reason to be 
thankful that he was trained to habits of farm work in his 
boyhood, and was sent to a country school, where he was 
not crammed to repletion, nor worried with credits, nor 
made wretched with competitive written examinations. 
In this connection, I cannot forbear quoting the following 
extract from the concluding paragraph of Col. Parker's 
paper in the appendix to the Report of the Committee 
of Twelve : 

" No method, no system of schools, no enrichment of 
courses of study, not even the most successful of teachers, 
can ever take the place in fundamental education of the 
farm and the workshop. No matter how good the city 
schools may be, or may be made ; no matter how good 
the state of society may be, the vital reinforcements of 
city life that lead to progress and prosperity, so far as we 



312 



APPLIED PEDAGOGICS 



can see, must always come from the sturdy stock of the 
farm. This fact, upon which most educators agree, puts 
upon the country school an immense responsibility. 
When skill, expertness, and insight control the methods 
of country schools ; when excellent teachers remain in 
the same schools year after year, the already powerful 
influence of country life upon the destinies of the nation 
will be mightily enhanced." 

Finally, perhaps the greatest service I can render student- 
teachers who are looking forward to a country school, is to 
call special attention to the Report of the Committee of 
Twelve on Rural Schools. This report of 227 pages is one 
of the most notable educational documents ever published 
in this country. In it the young student of pedagogics 
will find a detailed course of study, a report on Instruc- 
tion and Discipline ; a report on program ; an enrich- 
ment of Rural School Courses ; a Course of Study for 
Rural Schools, by Wilbur S. Jackman ; the Farm as a 
Center of Interest, by Colonel Parker ; the Country 
School Problem, by Dr. Emerson E. White. 



INDEX. 



Academies, Age of, 64; endowed academies, 65; Phillips-Andover 
Academy, ']'] ; Phillips-Exeter Academy, 64, 'j'j. 

Agricultural Colleges, 85-90; Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, 55. 

Alaska, Schools in, in. 

American Institute of Instruction, 78. 

Animal Life, Study of, 281, 282. 

Appleton's Readers, 140. 

Arithmetic, Methods and text-books in, 141-146, 191-194, 240-258, 
304; Colburn's Intellectual Arithmetic, 122. 

Armstrong, S. C, and the Hampton Institute, 99. 

Athletics, 288. 

Bailey, L. H., quoted, 280. 

Baldwin's Readers, 141, 208, 215. 

Baltimore, Schools of, 59, 116. 

Barnard, Henry, 71. 

Barnes, Earl, 121, 184, 290. 

Benton, Thomas H., 62. 

Berkeley, Governor, of Virginia, 29. 

Bible, The, 135, 292, 295. 

Bookkeeping, 253. 

Books for children, 160-163, 215, 261, 263, 284, 294. 

Books for school libraries, 263, 264, 265, 285, 301, 309. 

Books for teachers, 158-160, 170, 200-205, 263, 270, 285, 312. See 

Text-books. 
Boston, Schools in, 8, 12, 47, 56, 74, in, 130. 
Branches of Instruction, 118-120. 
Brown's (Gould) Grammars, 150. 

Calhoun, J. C, 62. 

California, Education in, loi-iio; high schools, 82. 

Chicago, Schools in, 115. 



^14 INDEX 

Child Study. 183. 

Children, Books for, 160-163, 215, 261, 263, 284, 294. 

Chinese Classics, 134. 

Civil War, The, 71 ; public schools after the, 93-117. 

Class-room management, Suggestions on, 179-187. 

Clay, Henry, 63. 

Clinton, George, 50. 

Colburn's Arithmetic, 145. 

College of the City of New York, 52. 

College of William and Mary, 29, 58. 

Colleges, Colonial, 80. See Universities ; agricultural colleges, 85-90; 

Agricultural College of Pennsylvania, 55. 
Colonial Schools, 7, 36, 118, 141; colonial newspapers, 162; school 

laws, 22, 23, 26, 29. See Legislation. 
Colored Schools, 97, 98, 99. 
Columbia University, 25, 83. 
Composition-writing, 'j'], 237. 
Connecticut, Early schools in, 49. 
Conservatism and Progress, 127. 
Copy Books, 119, 218. See Writing, 
Cornell University, 83, 86. 
Correlation in Reading Lessons, 217. 
Country Schools, 303-312. See Rural Schools. 
Courses of Study, in high schools, 76. 
Credits and checks, 188. 
Curry, J. L. M., quoted, 94, 96. 

Dame Schools, 20. 

Dedham, Mass., Early Schools in, 10. 

Defining, 224. 

De Garmo, Charles, quoted, 128, 239, 267, 271, 275, 296. 

Development Method, 195-198. 

Dewey, John, quoted, 213, 214, 221. 

Discipline, 120, 175, 177. ^^^ Management in School Government 

District Schools, 66, 122. See Rural Schools. 

Dorchester, Mass., Early Schools in, 10. 

Drawing, Methods of Teaching, 119, 225-228, 309. 

Dummer Academy, 65. 

Dutch Colonial Schools, 24, 51. 



INDEX 315 

Dvvight's Geography, 154. 

Early American schools, 34-72, 118. 

Eaton, John, quoted, 94. 

Economy, True, in educational affairs, 168. 

Elective Courses of Study, 58, 83, 127. 

Eliot, Charles W., quoted, 84, 182, 186, 213, 257, 277, 284. 

Emerson, George B., 74. 

Endowed State Universities, 80. 

"English Reader," Murray's, 139. 

Enrollment in public schools of the United States, 164 ; in high 

schools, 75 ; in normal schools, 79. 
Examinations, 186, 276, 310. 

Farm, The, as a center of interest, 307 ; education of farmer's chil- 
dren, 66. 
Federal Aid for higher education, 89. 
First day of school, The, 174, 309. 
Fractions, Teaching, 191, 242, 247. See Arithmetic. 
Franklin, Benjamin, 28, 68. 
Freedman's Bureau, The, 94. 
Friends' schools, 28, 61. 
Froebel, and the kindergarten, 125. ' . 

Games and plays, 289. 

Geography, Early text-books in, 153-158; methods of teaching, 269- 
277, 283, 304; Redway and Hinman's geographies, 158, 271, 285. 
Georgia, Early schools in, 60. 
Girard College, 57. 

Girls, Education of, 21, 60, 74; first academy for, 65. 
Grammar schools. Early colonial, 8, 10. 

Grammar, Text-books and methods in, 138, 146-153, 194-196, 304. 
Grant, U. S., 72. 
Greeley, Horace, (i"]. 
Grube Method in arithmetic, 240. 
Guyot's Geography, 158. 
Gymnastics, 287. 

Hadley, Mass., Early schools in, 21. 
Hall, G. Stanley, quoted, 178, 286. 



■5 



1 6 INDEX 



Hall, Samuel R., ']']. 

Hampton, Va., Normal Institute, 99. 

Hanus, Paul H,, quoted, 76, 123, 252. 

Harris, W. T., quoted, 61, 70, 90, 112, 213, 300. 

Harrison, William Henry, 40, 63. 

Harvard University, 8, 83. 

Herbart Society, The, and Herbartian methods, 115, 221, 227, 296. 

Higher Public Education, 73-92; in the South, 98-100. 

Historical Records of Common Schools, 18. 

History, Text-books and methods 259-268; in rural schools, 304. 

Home education, 66. 

Hornbook, The, 130, 131. 

Imperfections in school system, 167. 

Improvements, Modern, in methods, of instruction, 124, 166. 

Industrial education, 85-90. 

Instruction, Branches and methods of, 118. 124. See Methods. 

Inventions, Early, and their influence on education, 35. 

JaCKMAN, Wilbur S., quoted, 284, 306. 
Jackson, Andrew, 62. 
James, William, quoted, 196, 291. 
Jefferson, Thomas, 30, 36, 58, 63. 
Johnson, Richard Malcolm, 60. 
Jordan, David Starr, quoted, 92, 299. 

Kephart, Horace, quoted, 32, 53. 
Kindergartens, 125, 297. 
Kirkham's Grammar, 1 50. 

Lancastrian schools in colonial times, 52, 55, 59. 

Land Grants, 85 ; Land Reservations for Schools, 37, 39, 80. 

Language lessons, 1 52, 232-236. See Grammar. 

Legislation, School, in the colonies, 22 ; in Ohio, 43 ; in Massachusetts, 
44; in New York, 46, 50, 113; in Connecticut, 50; in New 
Jersey, 53 ; in Pennsylvania, 53 ; in Virginia, 58 ; in South Caro- 
lina, 59; in North Carolina, 61 ; in California, 102, 104, 107. 

Letter-writing, 233. 

Libraries, School, Books for, 263, 264, 265, 285, 301, 309. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 63, 71, 86, 294. 



INDEX 317 

Literature in connection with American history, 266. 
Lukens, H. T., quoted, 221, 227. 
Lyon, Mary, 65, 68. 
Lyte's Grammars, 239. 

McAllister, James, 57. 

McGuffey's Readers, 140. 

McMurry, C. A., quoted, 183. 195, 198, 296. 

Management in School Government, 120, 173-178, 309; in class- 
room, 179-187 ; in r.ural schools, 303-312. 

Manhattan, Schools in, 23, 51, 56, 113. 

Mann, Horace, 70, 74. 

Manners and morals, 292-302. 

Manual Training, 289. 

Map drawing, 272. 

Marietta, Ohio, 43. 

Martin, G. H., quoted, 65, 71. 79. 141, 295. 

Massachusetts, Schools in, 8, 23, 45, 46, 73, 75, 112. 

Mayo, A. D., quoted, 60, 93, 97, 165. 

Methods and text-books : Reading, 130-141,207-212; spelling, 135- 
137, 207, 210, 222-225 ' writing, 119, 206, 218; arithmetic, 141- 
146, 191-194, 240-258 ; grammar, 138, 146-153, 194-196, 230-239; 
geography, 153-158, 269-277, 283; drawing, 225-228; music, 
228; history, 259-268; general methods, 180-184, 188-191. 

Military Academy at West Point, 91. 

Mill, John Stuart, quoted, 184, 304. 

Morals and manners, 292-302. 

Morse's Geography, 1 54- 1 57. 

Mount Holyoke Seminary, 65. 

Mountain States, Education in the, no. 

Muir, John, 121. 

Murray, Lindley, 139, 146. . 

Music, Vocal, 228. 

Mythology, Excess of in lower grades. 214. 

National Schools, 90; a national university. 91. 

Natural Geographies, The, by Redway and Hinman, 158, 285. 

Natural methods in teaching geography, 269-277. 

Nature Studies, 278-285, 305. 



•5 



1 8 INDEX 



Naval Academy at Annapolis. 91. 

Negroes, Education of. 96-100. 

New England, Education in, 7-23, 44, 64, in; colonial school laws 
in, 22 ; normal schools in, 78. 

New Jersey, Early schools in, 53. 

Newspapers, Colonial, 162. 

New York, College of the City of, 52. 

New York, Schools in, 23,46, 49, 56,71, 111-114; normal schools 
in, -JT. 

Normal Schools, 77-80, 83, 108; public normal schools, 78; statistics 
of, 79 ; private normal schools, 80 ; state normal schools in Cali- 
fornia, 108. 

North Carolina, Schools of, 60. 

North Central States, Education in, 114-116. 

Northwest Territory, 37; ordinance of 1787, 38; land system, 39; 
schools in, 43, 71, 80, 114. 

Ohio, First permanent settlement in, 42 ; early schools in, 43. 
Ordinance of 1787, for Northwest Territory, 38, 
Oregon, Schools in, no. 
Outlook, Educational, 164-170. 

Pacific States, Education in, loi-iii ; state legislation in California, 
102, 104, 105 ; school beginnings, 102 ; parochial schools in San 
Francisco, 105 ; normal schools, 108 ; state publication of text- 
books, 109; the mountain states, no. 

Parish schools, 27, 49. 

Parker, Francis W., quoted, 230, 245, 251. 277, 307, 311. 

Peabody, George, 94 ; Peabody Educational Fund, 95. 

Pedagogics, Applied, 204; books on, 158-160, 170, 200-205. 

Pedagogy, Departments of, in state universities, 83. See Norinal 
Schools. 

Penn, William, 26. 

Pennsylvania, Schools in, 26, 46, 53, in. 

Periodicals, Educational, 78. 

Philadelphia, Schools in, 55, 57, 113. 

Phillips-Andover Academy, 64. "j"] ; Phillips-Exeter Academy, 64. 

Physical Culture, Modern Views on, 286-291. 

Physical Geography, 283. 



INDEX 319 

Physics, 283. 

Physiology and Hygiene, 282. 

Pike's Arithmetic, 142-145. 

Plants, Studies of, 280, 281, 282. 

Plymouth Colony, Schools in, 7, 17, 18, 22. 

Politeness, Lessons in, 301. 

Practical value of common schools, 67. 

"Primer, The New England," 62, 131-134. 

Princeton, University of, 53. 

Program, 187, 310. 

Promotions, 185, 276. 

Psychology, 202; psychological principles, 221. 

Public School Society. The, 52. 

Punishments in school government, 120, 161, 177. 

Puritans, Schools and educational ideas of the, 8, 30. 

Quakers, Schools and education among the, 26, 28, 61. 
Question and Answer, 180. 

Reading, Methods and text-books in, 130-141, 207, 208-212, 215- 
217, 304. 

Reading and Study. Professional, 158-160, 199-205, 312. 

Recitations, 121, 180, 188-198, 309. 

Records, Historical, of common schools, 18; of grammar schools, 10. 

Reform, Educational, 256. 

Revolutionary War, Effects of, on Education, 31, 34. 

Rural Schools in colonial times, 15 ; in the South, 61 ; in New Eng- 
land, 15, 66; common-sense applied to, 303-312. 

St. Louis, Schools in, 115, 126. 

Salaries, Teachers', 120. 

Salem, Mass., Early schools in, 13, 21. 

San Francisco, History of schools in 102-105, 124. 

Schlee, E., quoted, 190. 

School committee, 11. 

" School Keeping, Lectures on," Hall's, 'j'j. 

Science, Natural, and geography, 276. 

Scotch-Irish, The, in America, 27, 33, 50, 58, 59, 6r. 

Secondary and higher public education, 73-92, 

Sherman, Roger, 68. 

Slater Fund, The John F., 96, 



320 INDEX 

South Carolina, Schools in, 59. 

Southern States, Education in, $8, 93-101, 116. 

SpelHng Books, 118, 135-137. 

Spelling, Methods of teaching, 135-137, 207, 210, 304. 

Spencer, Herbert, quoted. 293. 

State control of schools, 37; state public universities, 80 ; state normal 

schools, 79 ; state agricultural colleges, 86. 
Stevens, Thaddeus, 54. 

Study, Courses of, 1 18-120, 123-129; habits of, 181-183, 310. 
Supplementary Reading, 208, 212, 215, 261, 263, 264, 266, 284. 
Swinton's Readers, 141 ; Grammar and Language Lessons, 153. 

Tabor, F. H., quoted, 289. 

Taxation for Support of Schools : In the South, 100 ; in California, 107. 

Text-books, State publication of, 109; studies on, 130-163; use ot, 

189-197. See Methods and Text-books, 
Tompkins, Arnold, quoted, 181, 187. 
Township, Congressional, Division of, 40. 
Training Schools, JJ, 81. See No7'7nal Schools, 
Tuskegee, Normal Institute, 99. 

Ungraded schools, 303-312. 

Universities, State, 80-85, 108. 

University, A National, 91; California, 82, I08 ; Columbia, 25, 83; 

Cornell, 83, 86 ; Harvard, 8, 83 ; Michigan, 82 ; Princeton, 53 ; 

Purdue, 87 ; Texas, 82 ; Yale, 83. 

Virginia, Schools in, 29. 58. 

Vocal music as a means of culture, 228. 

Washington, Booker, T., 100. 

Washington, D. C, Schools in, 116. 

Washington, George, 29, 30, 63, 92. 

Webster, Daniel, 68. 

Webster, Noah, 118, 135, 137, 140, 148. 

West Point, Military Academy, 91. 

White, E. E., quoted, 186. 

Willard, Emma H., 65. 

William and Mary, College of, 29, 58. 

Willson's Readers, 140. 

Writing, 206, 2 1 S.J S^ Co^y Books. 

Yale Universit^^/ ' **^ 



